"The Artful Dodger," an irreverent follow-up to Dickens’ "Oliver Twist" exploring the adult double life of Charles Dickens’ famous prince of thieves. Set in 1850s Australia in the lively colony of Port Victory, we meet Jack Dawkins, The Artful Dodger, who’s transferred his fast fingers as a pickpocket to the nimble skilled fingers of a surgeon. Dodger’s past returns to haunt him with the arrival of Fagin, luring him back into a world of crime.Â
"The Artful Dodger," an irreverent follow-up to Dickens’ "Oliver Twist" exploring the adult double life of Charles Dickens’ famous prince of thieves. Set in 1850s Australia in the lively colony of Port Victory, we meet Jack Dawkins, The Artful Dodger, who’s transferred his fast fingers as a pickpocket to the nimble skilled fingers of a surgeon. Dodger’s past returns to haunt him with the arrival of Fagin, luring him back into a world of crime.Â
John Platt/Hulu
This time of year, it's easy to overindulge in a rotation of holiday movies you have seen 10 times or more. Recommended is an exhilarating Hulu series that is a look back in time that combines the well-known literary yarn of "Oliver Twist" and takes those beloved characters and reimagines them years later. Hulu is now streaming "The Artful Dodger," Jack Dawkins's (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) tale, set in the bustling and grimy Aussie colony where he has educated himself and created a new life putting those nimble pickpocket digits to use as a gifted surgeon. That is, until an old nemesis believed dead shows up off one of the prisoner ships from England, threatening to expose Dawkins's less-than-ideal history. Lead actor Brodie-Sangster is a revelation in this role. His physical alacrity in certain scenes and ability to draw you into the story is refreshing, making this one an addictive watch.
"The Artful Dodger" (whose eight episodes began on Hulu Nov. 29) kicks off in high gear with a 2005 rocker, Wolfmother's "Joker and the Thief," as Jack is unlucky at wagering bets with cards and is suddenly on the run to his day job, where he deftly saws off a man's leg as humanely as possible in under 30 seconds.
"The Artful Dodger" is now streaming on Hulu.
Hulu
You heard me right, and given the time when ether was an experimental new drug and not readily available to poor souls in need of an amputation, it gets your attention quickly. The gore is primarily bloody visuals, but it's intense, as we can certainly empathize with the patient's anxiety. Then, operating rooms were public galleries and correctly referred to as "theatres," with sterility issues and germs being an unknown factor. Jack is a rock star to the inebriated viewers who paid to watch the gruesome action and wager bets on his amputation times. These scenes are not gratuitous but fact-based on actual events, as medicine was in its early (and most unpleasant) stages.
Using modern and eclectic music to percolate to the action, "The Artful Dodger" is a fun and contemporary sendup of the iconic characters Charles Dickens wrote 15 years later: The loquacious pickpocket Jack Dawkins (Artful Dodger) and the Svengali of the motherless boys of London's mean streets, Fagin (a superb David Thewlis) have a fractious reunion these years later. This classic story was shown great respect and imagination by writers James McNamara, Andrew Knight, Vivienne Walshe and Dan Knight.
Lady Belle, the governor’s daughter, is determined to become the colony’s first female surgeon in "The Artful Dodger."
John Platt/Hulu
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These characters are now grown men living far away from dirty old London in the early days of even dirtier Australia's burgeoning population drive. This distant land was a place where many criminals facing exile from Britain wound up living, often as slave labor on chain gangs. Not just the Twist characters are featured, as the governor's headstrong and brilliant daughter, Lady Belle, is introduced. She is determined to become Australia's first female surgeon, kick societal expectations of her gender to the dust, and, of course, catches the Dodger's eye as the story unfolds.
Our current period TV offerings are solidly entertaining, with HBO/Max's "The Gilded Age" giving us all the Julian Fellowes-scripted feels of that unique period (1877-1896) in American history. Hulu's "The Artful Dodger" is not too far off in timeframe, an 1850s tableau of society, crime and punishment Down Under. It's a perfect family watch (not for young children) laced with heart-stopping moments of primitive medical realism (Dawkins is a naval doctor now) that make you highly relieved you live in the present day.
The medical theater bits are the only caveats for this grand reunion of literary characters. Still, history is respected here, and the visceral realities of early medicine are not for the weak-hearted. To put it bluntly, if you get queasy at these realistic medical scenes, you may want to avert your eyes but stay for the fun when Fagin rolls off a prisoner ship and threatens to upend Jack's respectable life.
Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Jack Dawkins) and David Thewlis (Fagin), in "The Artful Dodger."
Courtesy of Hulu
These characters serve fans of the "Twist" lore very well. My own "Oliver Twist" first exposure was the film, not the book, back in 1968 on the big screen. I was barely 6, and the scenes with the late Oliver Reed cast as Bill Sikes terrified me, as did the original Fagin (Ron Moody). I was there for the dreamy young Mark Lester, the titular Oliver, and his pal, the Artful Dodger, played by Jack Wild. Those two would become the fodder for many a teen magazine in the '60s.
If you have memories of seeing this film in the theater or loving the book, you likely will enjoy it as much as I did; revisiting this Dickens classic seems right about this time of year.
