This fun, action-packed romp about super-powered highway robbery is like Gentleman Jack with added swagger. And its star could not be more magnificent
God knows, after the final triumphant, harrowing series of Happy Valley last year Sally Wainwright has earned the right to kick back and relax a bit. Renegade Nell is the result. Seemingly designed for a younger audience than her usual fare, this is a fun, slightly odd, definitely slighter piece of work that channels the spirit of perhaps her second most famous work, Gentleman Jack (or does that tie with Last Tango in Halifax? Or Scott & Bailey? Heavens, she has earned more of a rest than I realised) and adds a supernatural twist to it.
This time we are in the 18th century and, unusually, down south. Our heroine is Nell Jackson – Louisa Harland, who made her name as the glaikit Orla in Derry Girls and could not be more brilliant here in a wholly different part. She returns to her native village of Tottenham five years after she was thought to have been killed with her soldier husband on the battlefield to find her family and friends at first perturbed, then happy to see her back.
