Like most of the top-tier cast – Brydon, Anna Chancellor (Pennyworth), Preacher’s Dominic Cooper and the mighty Jim Broadbent as Jane’s uncle, the Duke of Leicester – the overriding impression is that everyone on My Lady Jane is having a blast.

“It’s a romp, that’s how I’d describe it,” says Brydon. “I found it hugely enjoyable because playing Bryn in Gavin & Stacey, he says one thing and he means that thing. Whereas with Lord Dudley, I am wheeling and dealing and being rather Machiavellian. Succession is one of my favourite recent comedies and the comedy in that is all about scheming too.”

‘I think every woman ... whose life was cut short deserves to have a fun, sexy romcom written about them.’

Emily Bader, the star of My Lady Jane

Succession in a 16th century alt-fantasy (based on a bestselling YA series)? If that sounds like a lot that’s because My Lady Jane is a lot. It’s one of the more audacious genre mash-ups of recent years, sitting somewhere between Bridgerton, Blackadder, the spoof history series 1066 and All That, Cate Blanchett in the 1998 historical drama Elizabeth, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Princess Bride. There’s plenty of what a certain type of Englishman might call “rumpy pumpy” (others would just say, “sex”) as well as swords, sorcery and a dash of transmogrification, too.

Bader says that it’s this last strand that anchors a freewheeling, gadabout show in the real world. People in My Lady Jane are divided into Ethians and Verities, the former able to transform into animals at a stroke, the other ordinary humans.

“It’s something that people are born with,” says Bader, “and I think in our story it’s a metaphor for otherness.”

You don’t have to know much sociology to know that the stock response to otherness in most societies tends to be rejection. That’s in My Lady Jane, too.

“At the beginning of this story,” says Bader, “Ethians are outcasts: there’s a law in place to exile them into the forest. The Ethians form these Robin Hood-esque vigilante groups that are just trying to survive in a world that doesn’t want them.”

She says that although My Lady Jane bears scant resemblance to the written history of Lady Jane Grey, some of the things she learnt about the real Jane found their way in to her performance.

“We do know that the real Lady Jane was incredibly educated and had interests in all kinds of things like herbology. It’s a great representation of how she was constantly shirking societal expectation.”

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This Jane doesn’t just smile meekly while giving history nine days to lop off her head.

“We are subverting tropes with all the characters,” Bader says. “But we do make fun of what the actual history was. People always tell Jane, don’t say, ‘What?’ say, ‘Pardon’.” We are constantly doing little jabs at the way that history expected women to behave … and then showing how in this show we’re not following those rules. There’s a lot of swearing. There’s a lot of female empowerment, and it is all shown from a female gaze.”

In the face of My Lady Jane’s gleeful feminist counter-factualism there’s really no time for quibbling about the history. As Bader says, “There’s a place for historical accuracy. This is not that. I mean, people turn into animals.” But My Lady Jane does speak to the past and – like any good history – reflect on the present.

“The second that I started to learn about Lady Jane Grey and her life,” Bader says, “you realise that at base it’s a tragedy. I think every woman that had no chance and whose life was cut short deserves to have a fun, sexy romcom written about them. It’s good for society to have a little bit of a retelling.”

My Lady Jane streams on Prime Video from Thursday, June 27.

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