Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Thewlis, Maia Mitchell, Damon Herriman, Luke Carroll, Vivienne Awosoga, Damien Garvey, Lucy-Rose Leonard, Tim Minchin, Kim Gyngell, Nicholas Burton, Susie Porter, Albert Latailakepa, Miranda Tapsell, Brigid Zengeni, Aljin Abella, Huw Higginson, Jessica De Gouw, Tom Budge, Michael Sheasby, Ezekiel Simat, Stephen Ryan, Justin Smith, Jude Hyland, Hal Cumpston, Nicholas Hope, Maua Fuifui, Finn Treacy, Andrea Demetriades, Fayssal Bazzi, Steve Morris, Finnian James, Nocholas Cassim.
There will be the inevitable call from a section of television viewers that will decry the modern adaptation of a classic that moves the characters on to such a point in time that they may seem unrecognisable to those still suffering from the nostalgia of previous creations and the story, and more importantly, the ending they know so well.
However, in terms of literature adaption and re-imaging of the fate of three of Charles Dickins’ enormously memorable and publicly favourite characters, Fagin, Jack Dawkins, and Oliver Twist, what has been produced in their name in The Artful Dodger is a sequel that matches the darkness of the author’s masterpiece, but one that revels in the joy of progression, of the change in scenery from the sour and bleak nature that Victorian London offered its poor and destitute citizens, to that in which greeted the thousands who were transported to Australia at Her Majesty’s pleasure; sun, punishment, and an opportunity to be lost in a smaller crowd.
The Artful Dodger is magnificently produced, it is a serial to which its cast dig deep in the historical backdrop of the transportations for the penal colony, and that in the literature the 1838 novel, the way it subverts how the reader across time was left with Fagin and his favourite pickpocket’s fate, and by doing so enlarges the appreciation for a tale that sadly resonates deeply today.
We are in a place of time where if they bought back the work houses tomorrow, many would not be surprised, indeed such is our current precarious position that we would be forgiven if we understood just how close we were to being treated as the lowest that found their way to an uncharted world on the other side of the Earth; so if we find ourselves rooting for the former thief turned respected surgeon and the man to whom readers were assured had died at the hands of the hangman’s noose, then can society blame us for refusing to see the law as anything but a hinderance to freedom.
It is to the greatness of the cast, the superb Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Thewlis, Maia Mitchell as Jack, Fagin, and Lady Belle Fox, as well as the superb Damon Herriman, Tim Minchin, and Damien Garvey in rambunctious and high-spirited mood as the colony’s Governor that makes this unexpected series a box of delights. Down to Earth, subversively cool, educationally insightful, and one that if Dickens was able to see how his time and ours are not that dissimilar, that we are fighting a war of wits and injustice, and the survival of our species does not require those with inflated egos and supposed upper class bearing to be in charge.
A superb series, The Artful Dodger is going to be difficult to dislodge as a piece of television that hits the absolute sense of perfection.
Ian D. Hall