Renegade Nell review: A family-friendly romp full of Happy Valley writer's wit and swagger, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Renegade Nell (Disney+)

Rating:

Holy olde folklore, Batman! Great Britain just gained a historical superhero to rival Spiderman or Captain America - and she's a girl.

Sally Wainwright, the screenwriter behind Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack, has created an extraordinary English heroine, woven from tales of highwaymen, fairy stories, Gothic novels and a dash of Shakespeare.

Transformed into an eight-part series with Disney's unlimited budgets, Renegade Nell (Disney+) is a family-friendly romp bursting with Wainwright's trademark wit and anti-authority swagger.

Anyone longing for more of Sergeant Catherine Cawood's combination of no-nonsense toughness and protective loyalty to her family will adore it.

And if you enjoyed the greatcoat-and-leather-boots cross-dressing of Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, you're going to love seeing Derry Girls' Louisa Harland in red britches and a tricorn hat.

The script is rumbustious, without a word of foul language. There's punch-ups, brawls, sword fights and shootings galore, yet no gore or gratuitous bloodiness. And the attention to 18th century period detail is magnificent.

Harland plays Nellie, an innkeeper's daughter who returns home after her husband is killed fighting the French at the Battle of Blenheim (that's 1704, if you like your period dramas to conform to the history books). On the way, she is relieved of her horse, wedding ring and boots by a band of highwaymen.

But when the gang's leader (Frank Dillane) whacks her across the face with his pistol, something supernatural happens. Nell duffs up the robbers, sending them cartwheeling through the trees and swatting away bullets with the palm of her hand.

For reasons that become clear, Nell has a pixie bodyguard called Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed). Whenever her life is threatened, he becomes a whirling point of golden light, like Peter Pan's Tinkerbell — and dives straight down her throat.

After that, as she gleefully tells her sisters, 'I'm untouchable.'

In a pell-mell first episode, Nell finds herself accused of killing the local landowner (Pip Torrens) and on the run with her sisters Roxy and George (Bo Bragason and Florence Keen). Before long, she's holding up stagecoaches herself and winning hearts as a folk hero, even from the toffs she robs. Unlike the predictable fistfights of old-school comic books — Biff! Kapow! — there's a genuine tension every time Nell is set upon by men twice her size armed with muskets and cutlasses.

And as her sprite refuses to help if she has caused the violence and is apt leaves her alone after the worst is over, Nell has to rely on her own ingenuity as much as his magic.

As well as paying homage to traditional superhero themes, borrowed from Superman and his U.S. cohorts, Wainwright draws cleverly on English myth and literature. Nell is Dick Turpin and Jack the Giant Killer, Robin Hood and Maid Marion.

She is up against the Gothic forces of darkness, conjured by dissolute Lord Thomas (Jake Dunn) and his much smarter sister (Alice Kremelberg). And Adrian Lester is chillingly wicked as the satanic Lord Poynton, plotting to overthrow the queen.

Among a terrific supporting cast, Craig Parkinson as Nell's father, Joely Richardson, playing a newspaper owner, and Lenny Rush as a treacherous servant also stand out.

We've seen some astonishing TV on streaming channels such as Netflix and AppleTV+ this year: Guy Ritchie's posh gangster escapade The Gentleman, megabudget sci-fi in 3 Body Problem, sweeping historical adventure with Shogun, wartime spectacle in Masters Of The Air.

While cinema is afraid to invest in anything but remakes and sequels, this new kind of television has epic ambition and the vision to match it, as well as the funds.

Now the digital video-on-demand corporations are learning to control their stories on the small screen, making the budgets and the CGI special effects work to their advantage instead of being overwhelmed by them.

Renegade Nell looks so convincingly real, it's hard to remember that Billy Blind isn't actually fluttering around a highwaywoman's head as she gallops across the open fields of Tottenham with the dome of St Paul's on the horizon.

I bloomin' love it!