Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials — release date, episode guide, interview and everything we know

"I've always loved literature on folklore, fairy tales, witches and vampires; the darker characters, the more powerful characters, the characters that have dark sides or are misunderstood. I always wanted to play the witch when I was younger, rather than a princess, and then when I got married, my husband was always saying, 'is that another witch book that you're reading?'. So, when we started our production company, he said to me, 'why don't we do a documentary? Would you be interested?' He wrote a brilliant treatment for me and sent it off, and the next thing we knew, it was commissioned. Our target was to make this documentary of modern-day relevance."

"I knew a lot of what's in the documentary because, when you're from that area, it's something that you know about. I was brought up in Oldham, Lancashire, so we talked about it within the family, and there's a lot of women in the family so it's something you talk about because of the history of it. I probably didn't realise the weight of it when I was younger, but then certainly, as you come into your teenage years, you understand the weight of it. There's a lot of witch stores in Pendle, and there are a lot of trinkets and it's touristy, not that there's anything wrong with witch trinkets as I think they're representations of power, but you have to get beneath that to understand the history."

"The point of this documentary is to make people think differently when they look at that image of the pointy hat, the crone, the maiden, the young woman, and to understand where it came from, why people suffered in the name of that, and how the title of "witch" has now been reclaimed. A witch, to me, was always someone who was wild and powerful and dark, and I think, often, a lot of representations or misunderstandings of people or cultures come from a lack of knowledge about them. One of the big things that I thought I knew and that I found out isn't true is that all the Pendle witches were midwives. This isn't true, there were a few that were possible midwives, or like healing women, but most of them were just women."

"I didn't know what to expect. I found that the modern-day witches were very uplifting and quite joyful, because they were honouring the Pendle women and the Salem women and children. I felt like, as they were making their own communities today, there was a gathering of power, and it felt like they were doing it on behalf of all those women and the 'other' people that didn't have a voice. It was emotional to hear about the history because it still affects us today. There was a really hard day for me that I came away thinking, 'oh my God, this is extreme. Misogyny still exists, and we're in 2024 and it is perhaps on the rise again because of the internet'. That's the one day that really got me. But other than that, I think that it is an uplifting story, in a way."

"I've learnt a lot. We had two different directors, we filmed in three different countries, and it was a year of filming with snowstorms in between. We changed the scripts because the documentary started going in a different way and now, I know that is how documentaries are made: you have an idea and then suddenly it goes in a different direction, because you start to think, 'oh actually, this is more interesting', and then you regroup. I definitely learnt a lot because I wasn't a documentary maker,  but that's what this job is; I don't know anything until I do it! So, it's about just doing it and learning."