Having established herself on the BBC with the police procedural “Joyful Valley” and the crossdressing costume drama “Gentleman Jack,” screenwriter-turned-showrunner Sally Wainwright has adopted numerous creatives and brought the Disney shilling to provoke her newest mission. You possibly can hardly blame her, given the lowered supply the cash-strapped British broadcaster is now extending even to its extra illustrious dramaturges: not often greater than three episodes per collection and 4 characters per scene. Imposed by post-Brexit belt-tightening, this sorry set of limitations has exasperated these obliged to work inside them whereas dispiriting viewers, left watching the life — and the expertise — drain from primetime broadcasts.

Mashing up historic and fantastical components, the pricey-looking, eight-part “Renegade Nell” rides right into a surprisingly crowded area for mild interval entertainments straddling the Stuart and Georgian eras, rising after the sadly short-lived BBC comedy “The Witchfinder” and Apple TV+’s current “The Utterly Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin.” Whereas far much less aggressively daft than both of these, “Renegade Nell” skews markedly youthful than Wainwright’s previous fare. The Disneyfication is clear from its first bout of motion, whereby ingesting a luminescent sprite permits our ragged pipsqueak of a heroine to overthrow even the burliest male foes. Name it the “Avengers” impact: Within the streaming sector, even freeway theft should now be carried out by people with superpowers.

In equity, Nell Jackson (Louisa Harland) wants all the assistance she will get, having lengthy been thought useless by her publican father (Craig Parkinson) and youthful sisters (Florence Eager and Bo Bragason). Returning to her North London dwelling, this revenant is quickly embroiled in a high-society plot involving an area landowner (Pip Torrens), his weak-willed son (Jake Dunn) and vengeful daughter (Alice Kremelberg), and a string-pulling Earl (Adrian Lester). The fallout finds Nell enjoying each outlaw and surrogate mom to her siblings, assisted by the aforementioned sprite: Billy Blind, a gender-flipped Tinkerbell performed by “Ted Lasso” co-star Nick Mohammed, typically gnat-small, typically as huge as a manor home.

Billy isn’t the one shapeshifter right here; whereas on the run, working-class Nell is seen to imagine the identification of a society belle, a Scottish countess and a jail sawbones, considered one of a number of factors the place Harland’s styling takes a flip for the androgynous and the present begins to resemble “Gentleman Jack” for youths. Inside its PG-13 certificates, “Renegade Nell” proves one thing of a chameleon itself, metabolizing not simply current developments in interval drama and superhero land, however the newly Disney-backed “Physician Who”, and the palace intrigues of “Home of Playing cards” and “Sport of Thrones.”(When a theatrical troupe attracts alongside our fugitives, the present even begins to imagine a number of the self-reflexivity of late-period “Deadwood.”)

At each flip, developments are backed up with considerable craft. Tom Pye’s costuming has the feel and variation you are feeling the British movie and TV trade might now do in its sleep, however which should contain lengthy nights both means. DoPs Oli Russell and Catherine Goldschmidt lean into their verdant Oxfordshire areas, making a Constable panorama out of each establishing shot, whereas manufacturing designer Anna Pritchard constructs each shadowy passageways and vivid, “Marie Antoinette”-like salons for Nell and her pursuers to sprint by means of. The stunt crew, headed by Abbi Collins and Lucy Egerton, engineer a few stagecoach chases of which the venerable Yakima Canutt would possibly nicely have accredited.

If there’s a weak spot, paradoxically, it’s the writing, which initially strikes the ear as extra purposeful than particularly placing, and quantifiably Wainwright-lite. (Wainwright wrote the primary 5, with Emme Hoy and Georgia Christou rounding issues off.) These early installments have some measure of enjoyable with Nell’s vernacular and interval codeswitching, but the plot is caught spinning the carriage wheels, as in these comic-book runarounds this mission has sublimated. It takes half the collection for Nell to come across anyone with comparable powers, and her relative invincibility means minor characters need to be put in hurt’s means simply to introduce any fast jeopardy.

Brisk, 40-minute episodes — shared by administrators Amanda Brotchie, M.J. Delaney and Ben Taylor — make sure the present stays this aspect of genial, nonetheless, and “Nell” finally shrugs off the burdens of worldbuilding to disclose what within the sterile context of Disney+ originals resembles one thing like an authored character. It’s not simply that the narrative stakes are raised; the writing begins to dig extra assiduously into England’s checkered heritage and inherited class prejudices, and by the point of the musical quantity that opens the penultimate episode, the present appears to be following its personal idiosyncratic path. (One very queer daydream appears to have escaped the Disney machine altogether.)

The actors catch the end-of-semester vibe shortly, and run with it. Beforehand seen on Channel 4’s and Netflix’s beloved “Derry Women,” Harland weaponizes an arsenal of tough edges and sharp angles — a nostril like an accusatory finger, fierce elbows and a sandpapery Camden accent — and hauls these early stretches together with a bristling physicality. (One conceivable pitch: what if Amy Winehouse had been pushed to carry up stagecoaches for a dwelling?) Because the Machiavellian villain, Lester makes good work of the reams of exposition that usually motor this type of present; Artwork Malik is humorous as a doddering lawyer and choose; whereas Joely Richardson’s imperious aristocrat one way or the other lives as much as her given billing of Woman Eularia Moggerhangar.

If the present simply geese the blandly interchangeable air of the now-innumerable Marvel and Star Wars spinoffs with which “Nell” can be competing for eyes, which may be right down to the best way it’s internalized the irreverent spark of British pantomime, a lot as Nell does Billy Blind. That is the handiwork of a writer-creator whose earlier reveals set a forbiddingly excessive bar, and who — like her heroine — is now on the lam, attempting to regain her bearings within the kingdom of corporate-friendly streaming leisure. Spry and recreation, there’s nothing forbidding about “Renegade Nell,” however its Easter launch date feels proper for a present that performs like an uncommonly well-appointed vacation particular — and I believe Nell Jackson will possible trip once more.

Season 1 of “Renegade Nell” streams on Disney+ from March 29; all eight episodes had been screened for evaluation.