“Renegade Nell” gallops ahead of other Disney+ offerings by telling a new story tremendously well, and giving us a young woman who defies the ruling class to gain not only justice but freedom.

With a bold premise and an array of fantastic performances, Renegade Nell is an action-packed, fairy tale-tinged swashbuckler with something to say.

Renegade Nell is well-paced and energetic, has a rollicking soundtrack, and delivers satisfying twists and turns en route to a crowd-pleasing finale as Nell finds herself confronting a deadly plot to destroy Queen Anne.

Renegade Nell is clever, well-paced, funny, and well worth the watch.

Like a lot of period pieces these days, the show is amusing, intelligent and very well executed, and it shrewdly exploits its comic and magical elements to get away with audience-friendly anachronisms of language, behavior and casting. The corollary, and perhaps the consequence, is that it feels like an exceedingly clever card trick — well worth the “Ooh,” but unlikely to linger in the mind.

The opening episode is strong, grounding the story in Nell’s family life. The further we get into the supernatural stuff, though, the more it feels like a rejected episode of Doctor Who. A truly memorable heroine is left battling through a script that isn’t worthy of her.

Bits of fun are scattered around a world too shabbily built to hold up to deeper scrutiny. As insistent as the series is about how much our scrappy young heroes matter, it’s oddly incurious about who they actually are.