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 were recounted with romantic detail after his untimely hanging at 33—first by tabloid pamphlets, then by author William Harrison Ainsworth in his 1834 novel “Rookwood.” “Dick Turpin” mines the gap between legend and reality for maximum silliness, crafting a giddy, semi-magical version of 18th-century England populated with warlocks, witches, and all manner of colorful characters.
And all of it centers on Turpin (Noel Fielding), a butcher’s failson whose flights of fancy find purchase when he’s inadvertently roped into joining, then accidentally killing the leader of, a gang of highwayman. You keep what you kill, of course, so now the gang belongs to Turpin, a highwayman who’s never so much as held a pistol. “So I just push that button and it comes out that tube?” he asks.
Even so, Turpin’s wild-eyed excitement and off-kilter imagination helps him and his Essex Gang build a reputation for themselves—aided, of course, by Eliza Bean (Dolly Wells), whose pamphlets of his exploits turn him from rogue to legend. (Insert anachronistic gag about the public’s zeal for true crime here.) But that same fame also earns them the ire of “thief-taker general” Jonathan Wild (Hugh Bonneville), a fellow criminal who styles himself as a lawmaker, determined to bring in Turpin for disrupting his lucrative grift.
Fans of “Our Flag Means Death” will find particular comfort in the show’s tone: a series of cock-and-bull stories told with an exceedingly laidback and conversational breath, bouncy and jaunty and very, very fuzzy. (One major side character is a giggly little magician named Craig the Warlock (Asim Chaudhry), whose name is kinda the whole joke.)
One of the show’s biggest hurdles, sadly, is Fielding, a comedian who’s made a name for himself on shows like “The Mighty Boosh” and “The IT Crowd” before settling nicely into a presenter role as the cuddly, aging-goth mascot of “The Great British Bake-Off.” Fielding’s absurdist appeal has always come from his soft, velvety purr and uncanny appearance—pale, rounded mug grinning impishly under a mop of wavy, stringy black hair. He’s like the world’s friendliest vampire, or if someone dipped Russell Brand in toffee and made him nice.