The Big Picture
Noel Fielding’s new comedy on Apple TV+,
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
, has excited fans of classic British comedies.
Dick Turpin was a real historical figure, but the show takes liberties with his story and portrays fictional adventures.
The mythology surrounding Dick Turpin, portrayed as a dashing gentleman rogue, was created through popular stories and ballads, turning him into a romanticized outlaw.
Noel Fielding is back with a new historical series for Apple TV+ sure to leave lovers of classic British comedies wildly excited. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin follows the infamous highwayman and his Essex Gang as they cause chaos and pursue fame and fortune in 18th-century England. Turpin is played by Fielding himself, and his characterization in the upcoming series is ambitious, charismatic, goofy, and highly unqualified. He’s a man who dreams of becoming a notorious highwayman, doing it more for fame than fortune, all the while with a corrupt officer (Hugh Bonneville) right on his tail.
From The Great to Our Flag Means Death, there have been many retellings of historical events that are played more for laughs than for learning, but the title of this new Apple TV+ show sets the audience up to not expect a close approximation of what went down. The adventures might be completely made up in The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, but the man was very real, and not as flashy as his legend reports.
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
Dick is a really famous robber, whose success is defined mostly by his charm, showmanship and great hair.
Release Date March 1, 2024
Main Genre Comedy
Seasons 1
Dick Turpin Was a Notorious Real-Life Highwayman
Image via AppleTV+
If you were to name one historical British criminal off the top of your head, chances are you’d say Jack the Ripper, the mysterious and vicious serial killer who stalked the foggy streets of London. If you were to name two, there would be quite a few answers from Blackbeard to The Kray Twins, but you might say Dick Turpin. Whether you’re an Adam and the Ants fan or enjoy the archetype of the dashing gentleman rogue, you know of him or his mythology. In England, he’s a dandy highwayman, wearing a mask and riding Black Bess across the countryside. He has charm and showmanship, robbing the rich and protecting the disadvantaged, being put on the same pedestal as Australia’s Ned Kelly or America’s Billy the Kid, but with the class and sophistication that was idealized at the time that the stories were written.
Because, after all, that’s all they were: stories written decades after the death of the real man. The reality is not that pretty and not that exciting, either, which is the usual for highly-mythologized historical tales. As the fantastic edutainment show, Horrible Histories, once said, “Everyone thinks they know the story of Dick Turpin’s highway glory.” But here’s what the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography, books like The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia by Graham Seal and The Myth Of The English Highwayman by James Sharpe, and first-hand historical records, actually know about Turpin.
Who Was Dick Turpin, Really?
Like with other figures from many centuries past, we don’t know exactly when Richard Turpin was born. We do know that he was one of six Turpin children born in Hempstead, Essex, and was baptized on the 21st of September in 1706. Specifics about his early life are also difficult to find, but several sources, including that of the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography, suggest that he followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as a butcher’s apprentice, opening his shop in Buckhurst Hill. The Essex Gang of deer poachers, otherwise known as the Gregory Gang, comes into the story somewhere in the early 1730s. This is the gang that will predominantly star in Fielding’s show: Samuel, Jeremiah, Jasper Gregory, Joseph Rose, Mary Brazier, John Jones, Thomas Rowden, and John Wheeler.
He wasn’t a full-fledged member of this gang at first—it was good to have a butcher on hand to dispose of stolen deer—but at some point, he did leave the meat business and join in as they moved from deer poaching to home invasion. With and without Turpin, the gang raided several houses and assaulted whoever inhabited them, rich or poor, young or old. There’s no evidence that any of the money that they stole went to the less fortunate, and their brutal means of robbery wouldn’t justify those ends, regardless. The Essex gang was apprehended sporadically in 1735, either being executed or transported to penal colonies. That is, except for Dick Turpin.
This is where he started his solo career as a highwayman, either on his own or with fellow ne’er-do-wells. The routine of highway robbery is pretty simple: wait on the roadside for a passing carriage, hold them up, pull out your pistol, and rob them by the threat of death by saying something to the effect of “your money or your life.” For a time, this was pretty successful, but things came to a halt after the possible manslaughter of his associate, Matthew King, and the murder of Thomas Morris, both committed by Turpin. He fled to York, changed his name to John Palmer, and kept a low profile until he got the itch to wreak havoc again.
He was arrested two separate times for theft and murder of livestock. Depressed by his failures, Turpin wrote to his brother-in-law, Pompr Rivernall, from his cell. Rivernall declined the letter, but in transit, it was picked up by postman James Smith, who’d taught Turpin how to write many years beforehand. He let the authorities know that John Palmer was the highwayman on the lam, and on April 7th, 1739, Turpin was executed, watched on by no one but some people he paid to mourn for him (no, seriously). He was 33 years old.
When Did Dick Turpin, the Dandy Highwayman, Become a Legend?
Image via AppleTV+
How did Dick Turpin go from just another criminal in a time and place full of them to the notorious and romantic outlaw we know him as today? You can thank multiple story-spinners for that, one being Richard Bayes, who put together a tabloid around the time of Turpin’s trial and death titled The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin, which may not have been genuine, but it was extremely popular. 19th-century author, William Harrison Ainsworth for that, reimagined Turpin’s life a century after he died in the 1834 novel, Rookwood.
While Turpin is only a highly-entertaining side character, it’s where the idea of him as a lively and dashing romantic came from, along with the legend of him riding his horse Black Bess from London to York in one night. These stories were repeated in ballads before bringing Turpin’s life into the history of cinema. This legendary ride to York has been the subject of two pieces of very early cinema, one in 1906 and one in 1922, both titled Dick Turpin’s Ride to York. There was also 1925’s Dick Turpin, which was one of the lost films of Tom Mix, as well as the British comedy, Carry On, Dick, from 1974 and the British TV epic, Dick Turpin, from 1979 to 1982.
The spread of tall tales and the belief that the past was somehow a more elegant time is what turns criminals into outlaws. True crime may seem like a new-ish trend that hasn’t yet died, but history has shown that there’s always been a fascination with those who misbehave. However, it’s important to ask where the line is—that is, if there even is a line anymore. How long should one wait before a criminal is historical enough to idolize? Which crimes are worth forgiving for the sake of a good story? In tales like Dick Turpin’s, someone always gets hurt, not just victims, but those who knew them. Unfortunately, they’re the first to be forgotten by history.