Renegade Nell: Sally Wainwright’s highwaywoman series is a swaggering caper of a show

“Little word of warning. You don’t want to mess with me”, Nelly Jackson tells highwayman Isambard Tulley in the opening minutes of Renegade Nell. The Disney+ fantasy adventure series is the latest show from Happy Valley writer, Sally Wainwright.

Nell has inadvertently stumbled on Tulley and his gang robbing a group of wealthy travellers in the woods. The date is 1705 and Nell is returning to her family tavern in Tottenham, widowed, after her husband, Captain Jack was “blasted in half at the Battle of Blenheim”.