Creators Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane took clear inspiration from the tall-tale nature of the real-life Turpin’s legend: a famed highwayman whose exploits had been recounted with romantic element after his premature hanging at 33—first by tabloid pamphlets, then by writer William Harrison Ainsworth in his 1834 novel “Rookwood.” “Dick Turpin” mines the hole between legend and actuality for optimum silliness, crafting a giddy, semi-magical model of 18th-century England populated with warlocks, witches, and all method of colourful characters.
And all of it facilities on Turpin (Noel Fielding), a butcher’s failson whose flights of fancy discover buy when he’s inadvertently roped into becoming a member of, then by accident killing the chief of, a gang of highwayman. You retain what you kill, in fact, so now the gang belongs to Turpin, a highwayman who’s by no means a lot as held a pistol. “So I simply push that button and it comes out that tube?” he asks.
Even so, Turpin’s wild-eyed pleasure and off-kilter creativeness helps him and his Essex Gang construct a repute for themselves—aided, in fact, by Eliza Bean (Dolly Wells), whose pamphlets of his exploits flip him from rogue to legend. (Insert anachronistic gag concerning the public’s zeal for true crime right here.) However that very same fame additionally earns them the ire of “thief-taker basic” Jonathan Wild (Hugh Bonneville), a fellow prison who types himself as a lawmaker, decided to usher in Turpin for disrupting his profitable grift.
Followers of “Our Flag Means Dying” will discover explicit consolation within the present’s tone: a collection of cock-and-bull tales informed with an exceedingly laidback and conversational breath, bouncy and jaunty and really, very fuzzy. (One main facet character is a giggly little magician named Craig the Warlock (Asim Chaudhry), whose identify is kinda the entire joke.)
One of many present’s greatest hurdles, sadly, is Fielding, a comic who’s made a reputation for himself on reveals like “The Mighty Boosh” and “The IT Crowd” earlier than settling properly right into a presenter position because the cuddly, aging-goth mascot of “The Nice British Bake-Off.” Fielding’s absurdist attraction has all the time come from his smooth, velvety purr and uncanny look—pale, rounded mug grinning impishly underneath a mop of wavy, stringy black hair. He’s just like the world’s friendliest vampire, or if somebody dipped Russell Model in toffee and made him good.