The humour is less slick than its predecessor, but Cooper’s exploration of ancient British traditions reveals more of him as a result – making it an upliftingly joyful watch

Call me a canker-hearted old cynic – you would, after all, be correct – but I have a tiny suspicion that Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country: Winter Solstice was thrown together in a rush after the unexpected fondness for his original three-part series on British folklore. Certainly it is more chaotic and less polished than the first episodes – even though they had what we might lovingly call a Heath Robinson-esque vibe themselves.

A large part of the original series’ charm was in the blurring between Charlie Cooper and Kurtan, the character he plays in his and his sister Daisy’s near-perfect bittersweet comedy This Country. There were lines so perfectly fitting for the latter that you became intrigued as to quite what was going on. Are Charlie and Kurtan in fact one and the same thing? Perhaps Daisy is a master puppeteer, simply dropping her brother into sets and letting the cameras roll while she improvises her Kerry lines around him? Or perhaps Charlie is simply the greatest actor since Richard Burbage, performing a seamless transformation before our very eyes?