In the Netflix dramedy Too Much, a brokenhearted American, Jess, makes the move across the pond, inspired in part by daydreams of stately castles, rolling green hills and dashing gentlemen professing their ardent admiration. She finds, instead, a scruffy musician in a dirty bathroom stall. The connection they strike up may not be the stuff fairy tales are made of, but it’s all the sweeter for being so raw and messy and real.

Or … maybe not. Starz’s latest Diana Gabaldon-based saga, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, is precisely the sort of thing that inspires moonstruck fantasies like Jess’ in the first place, filled as it is with scenic vistas, time-traveling contrivances and prettily suffering soulmates overcoming impossible odds. It’s also a reminder of how incomparably potent such a story can be when it’s done just right. Richly imagined, audaciously epic and, above all, unabashedly and deliriously romantic, it casts a spell that lingers long after the credits have rolled.

In 1714 Scotland, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), the kind-hearted bastard son of a not-so-kindly laird (Tony Curran’s Simon), crashes a gathering where he meets Ellen MacKenzie (a dazzling Harriet Slater), a fiercely independent noblewoman whose clan is veering toward a succession crisis in the wake of her father’s death. Despite hailing from bitter rival families, the two fall immediately and irretrievably in love, resolving to find a way to be together at any cost.

About two centuries later, Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine, touchingly vulnerable) writes increasingly despondent letters from the Belgian front in World War I. One of those missives crosses the desk of Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), a brainy clerk at the London censorship office. The two strike up a correspondence that blossoms into love, then marriage. But when they’re separated during a trip to Scotland by a bizarre twist of fate, each must call upon every ounce of strength and courage to find their way back together again.

For those familiar with the basics of the original Outlander series, the seventh season of which concluded earlier this year, these are the people whose children will someday grow into Sam Heughan’s Jamie and Caitríona Balfe’s Claire. For those unfamiliar, none of that matters at this point anyway, since showrunner Matthew B. Roberts is far less concerned with the preordained futures of these characters than their chaotic present. Though Blood of My Blood is a prequel, it’s one that functions equally well as a standalone piece, recreating its predecessor’s most potent charms while charting a new path all its own.

Said charms include, first and foremost, a commitment to the kind of full-bore romanticism that comes off as old-fashioned when it fails and timeless when it works. Ellen and Brian’s is the more classic-feeling of the two main storylines, cast as it is in the Romeo and Juliet mold. But where Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers were impulsive teenagers, Blood of My Blood’s have no such excuse. Ellen is a shrewd strategist who’s adamantly resisted marriage and Brian a loyal friend whose cousin (Rory Alexander’s Murtagh) is himself smitten with Ellen. That they’d decide within moments of meeting to risk it all for one another strains credulity. That we’re willing to buy it anyway is a testament to the intense chemistry between Slater and Roy.

Julia and Henry’s connection is a slower burn, by contrast, and the more grounded of the two to start. A marvelous second episode (directed, like the Ellen-and-Brian-centric first, by Jamie Payne) charts their courtship over their impassioned letters during the war, their ecstatic reunion after it, the highs and PTSD-induced lows of their domestic life. If their eventual separation is devastating to them, it’s thrilling to us as viewers. Corfield and Irvine share a warm chemistry all their own, and their characters’ efforts to reunite make for a poignant complement to Ellen and Brian’s to be together — particularly once the two couples’ storylines start to intersect for reasons that I’ve been asked not to spoil, but that anyone familiar with Outlander’s central premise will surely be able to guess.

As might be expected from any series whose four protagonists spend so much of their time pointedly not being together, Blood of My Blood is slightly more interesting on some fronts (Ellen’s) than others (Henry’s). But along every path, over all six hours (of a ten-part season) sent to critics, the series’ most magnetic draw is its uncynical belief in the power of true love to conquer any hardship, and its most formidable weapon the skill to persuade us that true love is, in fact, what we’re looking at here.

Where a less confident show might be tempted to undercut the sentimentality with a self-aware joke or relatable mishap, Blood of My Blood has Henry calling Julia “my hope” or Brian confessing that Ellen has “haunted my every thought” with full-throated feeling and no trace of irony. Where a clunkier one might focus on the obstacles tearing the characters apart at the expense of the attraction drawing them together, Blood of My Blood takes the time to savor their delight in getting to know one another, the peace they find in each other’s company — and, of course, the blaze that burns between them in beautifully choreographed and tenderly shot sex scenes that prioritize unbridled emotion over graphic nudity. (Though there’s a fair bit of the latter, too.)

And while the whole point of Blood of My Blood is the love stories, the series shrewdly makes the effort to flesh out the universe around our central foursome as well. Lavish sets by production designer Mike Gunn and intricate costumes by Trisha Biggar give the environs visual texture and depth. Flashbacks detail the complicated family dynamics between Ellen and her siblings (including hotheaded Dougal, played by Sam Retford, or calculating Colum, played by Séamus McLean Ross), or between Brian and his maidservant mother (Sara Vickers’ Davina). Snatches of conversation amid busy crowd scenes fill in the tangled web of alliances and grudges holding this land together, or tearing it apart.

The vivid world-building lends real heft to the love stories. We might only care about who inherits the MacKenzie lairdship to the extent that the outcome affects Ellen and Brian’s ability to be together, but we’re able to feel how heavily the potential consequences for their lands or loved ones might weigh on their shoulders.

It also elevates Blood of My Blood from simply a story we’re being told, to an experience we’re sharing with the characters. Its corner of 18th century Scotland starts to feel like a place you really might find yourself after wandering a bit too far into the woods. Its magical journeys like ones you really might undertake yourself. And its loves like ones you might be able to carry in your own heart, all the way back out into your own grittier and more mundane reality.