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Streaming stunners to chill to.

after the present-day exploits of The Simpsons and the 31st Century mayhem of Futurama, the far-off past must have seemed the obvious place for Matt Groening to set his new cartoon series. Yet while the medieval realm of Dreamland is a long way from Springfield, the snarky one-liners, pop-culture references and omnipresent overbites ensure his first show for Netflix comes fully clad in the Groening house style.

With its fairytale castle, magical transformations and fantastical ensemble of wizards, giants and fairies, Disenchantment initially resembles a page ripped right out of Tolkien. But the tone is closer to Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Our heroine is a hard-drinking princess with little appetite for the marriage of convenience her father has arranged for her as a way of shoring up his tottering kingdom. More often to be found supping ale in The Spotted Liver than carrying out her royal duties, Princess Tiabini (Abbi Jacobson) – ‘Bean’ to her mates – is a constant torment to her irascible dad. Small

wonder, then, he sends her out to work in ‘Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!’, the wittiest episode of this 10-parter. (“I’m a good butcher!” Bean crows, blood-splattered cleaver in hand. “This is a pet shop,” her employer wearily replies.)

Bean, in short, makes for a fiery, funny and appealingly naughty protagonist. (Check out the ‘Swamp And Circumstance’ instalment in which, having been sent abroad to make nice with a neighbouring fiefdom, she ends up swinging from a chandelier and telling them “we kicked your asses” in a recent conflict.) The other leads, alas, are not in her league.

Tiabini is accompanied – or lumbered with – a mild-mannered elf and a wise-cracking little demon. Voiced by Nat Faxon and Eric André respectively, this dreary duo seem like afterthoughts compared to Jacobson’s fully rounded tearaway. It’s early days, but it doesn’t bode well when the pompous suitor our heroine is trying to get shot of (Matt Berry) is more engaging than her sidekicks.

It’s the wealth of background detail, however, that suggests Disenchantment will have a life beyond its inaugural season. Whichever direction you look, comic potential abounds, from the Plague Patrol that polices Dreamland’s roads to the Little Orphan Annex from whose windows button-nosed tykes peer out miserably, or the distant Enchanted Forest that contains, we’re told, an unabashedly racist antelope.

Nods to Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Wicker Man and Netflix’s own Ozark prompt hearty chuckles without being made too self-consciously apparent. The ‘Castle Party Massacre’ episode, meanwhile, features a band called The Pillage People, not to mention a Sven-sitive Viking warrior. Neil Smith