Just when I hear the name Dick Turpin, a rush of memories hit me. Remembering all the fun I had as a kid watching Sidney James and the “Carry on…” movies.

The historic person of Richard Turpin (1705–1739) was an English highwayman, son of a butcher, whose exploits were romanticized following his execution in York for horse theft. In the early 1730s, Turpin became involved with the Essex gang of deer thieves. The Essex Gang is also part of the new show available on Apple TV.

He is also known for a fictional 200-mile (320 km) overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, a story that was made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after Turpin’s death. Ainsworth’s legend of Black Bess was repeated in works such as Black Bess or the Knight of the Road, a 254-part penny dreadful published in 1867–68. In these tales, Turpin was the hero, accompanied by his trusty colleagues Claude Duval, Tom King, and Jack Rann. These narratives, which transformed Turpin from a pockmarked thug and murderer into “a gentleman of the road [and] a protector of the weak”, followed a popular cultural tradition of romanticizing English criminals.

Apple takes the historic facts and turns it into a 6 part comedy show (so far), with a 30 minutes runtime per episode. Noel Fiedlung portrays the highway man, and I think his kind of humor is polarizing, and thus, I think there will be many people not liking the series at all. I know Fielding from his appearance in the IT Crowd. I like his sense of humor, but it took me one episode to get into it.

Dick Turpin is not a must-see, but a fun-to-watch.