Renegade Nell - A Review

Yeah, I'm procrastinating again. Dealing with post-Swanwick Blues and contemplating what to work on next, I decided to take a look at Renegade Nell, a swashbuckler fantasy series created by Sally Wainwright (of Gentleman Jack fame). While the Kestrel and Scar stories aren't really fantasy, I hoped to get some inspiration for them.

Taking place in 1705, we follow Louisa Harland as Nell Jackson, a soldier's widow who returns to her father's pub in Tottenham. During her journey, she's confronted by a gang of highway robbers led by Isembard Tully but defeats them with the aid of a fey called Billy Blind, played by Nick Mohammed. Not long after returning, she gets into a fight with Thomas Blancheford, the spoiled and boorish son of the local magistrate. In revenge, he kills Nell's father, arranges to have her and her sisters evicted, and then kills his own father and frames Nell for it. Now an outlaw, Nell must find a way to clear her name. Meanwhile, Thomas and his sister both fall under the sway of the unscrupulous Earl of Poynton, a powerful sorcerer and ringleader of a Jacobite plot to depose Queen Anne.

Going into the series, I was expecting some entertaining swashbuckler fantasy, and that delivers. There are some great sequences where Billy Blind inhabits Nell to give her superhuman strength (and the ability to catch bullets), but he won't inhabit her all the time. Nevertheless, Nell is still a cunning fighter even without Billy's help, and provides plenty of witty lines when she doesn't take anyone's crap. We don't know much about where Billy Blind came from, and he doesn't know either.

There's an impressive array of other characters too:

• Enyi Okoronkwo plays Rasselas, a stable hand at the Blancheford estate who becomes one of Nell's first allies. After Blancheford's father covers up the death of Nell's father, it's Rasselas who blows the whistle and later joins Nell when she goes on the run.
• Frank Dillane plays Charles Deveraux, a foppish noble whom Nell deduces to be Isembard Tully. The pair pose as an aristocratic couple at one point, which produces some funny bickering as they comment on their wanted posters.
• Jake Dunn plays Thomas Blancheford, who is a spoiled and foppish bully but later gets consumed by guilt after he kills his father. It's satisfying to see Nell kick his ass at the beginning of the series.
• Alice Kremelberg plays Blancheford's widowed sister, Sofia Wilmot. She initially covers for Thomas when he kills their father, and soon becomes a student of Poynton's black magic.
• Ashna Rabheru plays Polly Honeycombe, an aspiring novelist and romantic at heart who is looking to escape from an arranged marriage and later develops a crush on Nell.

One thing I wasn't expecting was the harsh critique of the inequality and elitism of society at that time (which honestly hasn't changed much). Nell is disdainful of how the law only protects the wealthy and influential, and fears that a magistrate won't help her since she's apparently killed one of their own. A later episode shows her posing as a doctor to infiltrate Newgate Prison, where she finds children serving sentences or awaiting execution for stealing bread or blankets. There's also a recurring theme (including a whole musical number) in which Nell is demonised by the newspapers, showing how the media often serves the interests of the elite while profiting off sensationalism. This is where I found the writing to be the strongest.

Sadly, there's only one season with eight episodes. When I was reading up on things, I discovered that Disney cancelled the series at the end of July. It's surprising what you find when you don't use Twitter. I guess Disney weren't keen on the aforementioned themes.

However, the series is available on Disney+ and is definitely worth a watch.

Happy writing.