KYNREN is back for a third year with new scenes and special effects which make it more spectacular than ever.

There’s a horse galloping around with its rider on fire; there’s a Roman prisoner dragged at full pelt across the arena. There’s a pitch invasion by angry suffragettes, there’s the Beatles on their zebra crossing, and there’s a truly menacing flypast by a shadowy enemy bomber.

But for all the new trickery, still it is the sheep running as fast as their little legs will carry them, followed by a gaggle of grease-lightning geese, that get the biggest round of applause; and it is the sight of tiny tots in goat-pulled carts that elicits a loud “ahhh” from the audience.

And the new touches along with the old favourites mean Kynren is still a riotous romp through 2,000 years of British – specifically County Durham – history. 

It ends, as ever, with a tub-thumpingly patriotic firework finale, which rocks you back into your seat with the noise, colour and enormity of the panorama spread before you.

This year centre stage at the finale is a newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, resplendent in flowing ermine on her throne while Ginger Spice jigs in the lake in her Union flag dress.

In the wings, England celebrate winning the World Cup – but this is a historical pageant rather than a reliable prediction of events in Russia.

And Kynren is still astonishing.

It is astonishing because of the forensic detail of the show. It is astonishing because a castle appears out of nowhere and a Norman longboat rises miraculously out of a lake. It is astonishing because 1,000 volunteers invest their summers, some their entire lives, into a show of such skill and great gusto.

And astonishing because it is in Bishop Auckland.

It is as the sun goes down that the magic of Kynren comes alive.

Saturday night’s preview began as the last rays lit up the brickwork of Auckland Castle, which is the backdrop to Kynren.

It would be tempting to talk about the timelessness of the skyline: the rooflines of the 800-year-old palace and the Victorian town hall mingle with the green canopies of the mature trees, but also caught in the last of the sunlight was the silver arm of a huge crane which is bringing new life to the old castle.

Plus, there’s the pointy top of the new welcome tower which will open in a matter of weeks.

Bishop Auckland is changing. While other town centres are in danger of dying, Bishop has one foot in the future.

The big question is whether there is enough in the Kynren nightshow to draw people back time after time, year after year.

“We’re not like the Trooping of the Colour where you see some wonderful things but the only thing that changes year by year is the name of the person who falls off the horse,” said philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer whose money has kickstarted the audacious project. 

“We are not like a Premiership football match where every moment of every game is different but ultimately it’s just 24 blokes running around a lawn.

“We are much more like Star Wars, or Harry Potter, which you can come back to year after year and see, in one sense, the same thing and same characters, but in another sense something quite different and unique because every performance is unique.”

Indeed, every performance of the old scenes reveals something new. After all the merriment and good natured slaughter of the battle scenes in which poor King Harold gets one in the eye quite comically, the mining disaster feels very poignant this year.

A terrifying explosion brings the pit props crashing down and the womenfolk rushing. As they wail, the horsedrawn hearses trundle solemnly across, the large wheels on the biers echoing the spinning of the pitwheel that we’d seen moments before.

The new stunts provide great novelty: a horse jumps through fire, and the water effects, which always draw applause as the shapes of Durham Cathedral are projected onto a fine mist, have evolved into a ballet of fountains.

The new scenes think about the 100th anniversaries of the end of the First World War, of the formation of the RAF and of women getting the vote, and end with a hymn of praise to British popular culture.

The centuries flash by in a flurry of fire, fury and fun, with the special effects turning this boisterous blast through Britain’s past into a truly dazzling spectacular.