Every Inside No. 9 Episode Ranked From Worst To Best
36. The Trial Of Elizabeth Gadge
Plot: In the 17th century, a pair of witch-hunters (Pemberton and Shearsmith) put a woman accused of being a witch (Ruth Sheen) on trial.
Location: A barn.
The only historical episode of Inside No, 9 to date is a deeply middling affair.
The cast are good and the episode boasts some effective dialogue, but this half hour just doesn't quite have it overall. It's only sporadically funny and while it does succeed in highlighting the sheer stupidity of the Witch Trials conducted in the past, the episode isn't that unsettling and therefore doesn't quite illuminate the full horrors of this topic.
There was potential to make a really powerful episode about this horrible chapter in English history, but The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge wasn't that.
It's got a great ending, but it still remains a fairly mediocre episode that sticks out like a sore thumb in the show's wonderful second season, not to mention the show's line-up of episodes in general.
Still, quality-wise it's a fair distance above the last place-ranked episode on this list, so that's something.