Renegade Nell

Or: Legend in the Making

 Dear reader, I know of no right and proper way to say it, other than to exhort you to treat yourself to Sally Wainwright’s Renegade Nell, a swashbuckling fantasy, that puts a kick under the sternum and the viewers imagination on a wild dance.

Nell Jackson (Louisa Harland) is just trying to get home. Widowed and back from the wars she just wants to settle back and her father’s in and reunite with her sisters Roxy (Bo Bragason) and George (Florence Keen). However, for reasons unknown even to himself, a pixie called Billy Blind (Nick Mohammad) has chosen to endow her with a magical strength. Fighting off highwaymen, like the plummy schemer Charles Devereux (Frank Dalliance) and the despicable Thomas Blancheford (Jake Dunn) makes Nell a hero, but when she is framed for murder, not even her powers can protect her from the law. Turned highwaywoman with the help of her sisters and helpful stableman called Rasselas (Enyi Okoronkwo), Nell’s adventures blunder into the web of Lord Poynton (Adrian Lester), a peer of the realm and, secretly, an evil wizard, who has his own designs on the fate of England.

I make no bones about my love of swashbucklers and Evil Wizards, but Renegade Nell is something special. The show is gripping, it’s story wiley, its jokes and its tragedy never coming from where you can see them. Wainwright capture the romance of the 1700’s England, it’s colors, it’s wildness, its magnificent wigs. And, while showcasing a history of England where devisers in its ethnicities (such as Lester, or Ashna Rabheru as the irrepressible Polly Honeycomb), and where a woman can run a publishing house, it still echoes both past and present injustices.

Harland makes the perfect reluctant heroine, a mix of cockiness, desperation, pride, and hidden injury. Her Nell manages to be both heroic and ordinary, never more so in the moments when she comes into her own powers, the look of delight on her faces as she can make her mark on the world is one no other actor could have made so universal. We also get treated to a pair of wonderful villains. Lester’s Lord Poynton is both reasonable, urbane, and terrifying, while Thomas’s sister Sofia (Alice Kremelberg, with a raven-croak voice and the gaze mod a loaded firearm), schemes and suffers for the dark arts. My only wish is that the show would have done more with Nick Mohammed, but the necessary secrecy of Billy Blind’s purpose, means he is only excellent, rather than the radiance we know him to be capable of.

If Wizards and Gentlemen Of The Road do not tickle your fancy (as they may not, though I can hardly credit it) then I would at least recommend listening to the soundtrack of the show, composed by Oli Julian and Nick Forester. It’s one of the most engaging soundtracks I’ve heard in years and is the shining crown on a wonderful show.