Apple+

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With the crushing news that Our Flag Means Death is not renewed for a third season many in fandom had their moods depressed as the loss of the irreverent, gloriously queer, ahistorical pirate series. They may find some so solace in Apple+’s original program The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

Like Taika Waititi’s pirate series Dick Turpin is inspired by an actual historical persona, a highwayman whose status and legend are more products of vivid exaggeration that his actual crimes and exploits.

Starring comedian/actor Noel Fielding as Dick Turpin. An imaginative man desperate to be something other than a butcher’s son Dick leaves home and becomes a highwayman and member of the Essex Gang, the nearly worst rated gang of highway thieves in the area. Together with the oddball members of the gang, Turpin engages in hijinks as a highwayman while dodging a local Lord and the godfather of organized crime Lord Wilde (Hugh Bonneville.)

While not as flamboyantly queer as Our Flag Means Death, Dick Turpin manages a modern sensibility and pacing in its humor. Despite its 18th century setting the characters and tone are decidedly 21st century. Produced in the United Kingdom, the series is populated with familiar actors and comedians if you are a bit of an Anglophile. The crime and violence are played for laughs, and it is not the sort of program that will leave you with deep questions about the nature of life and humanity but rather help you spend half an hour not thinking about such deep subjects. It is escapism but there are times when that is your highest duty to yourself and your sanity.

The first two of six episodes are already available to stream with the remaining four being delivered on a weekly basis as is the standard practice for Apple+ programing. If you have access and need to forget the terrible mess that is our current world you could do far worse than engrossing yourself in The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin.