You remember Oliver Twist, right? The Charles Dickens novel about a poor orphan boy who famously beseeches the workhouse attendant for more gruel in a mewling English lilt, “Please, sir. I want some mooooore” and, in doing so, makes everyone all mad at him? Even if you haven’t read the book, seen the musical adaption Oliver!, or grown up with Disney’s Oliver And Company, you’ve probably heard that line before. To spoil the whole 19th-century novel for you, Twist is just a good little guy who has bad things happen to him all the time until his true lineage is later revealed and he’s adopted by a kind, rich benefactor. Jack Dawkins, nicknamed “The Artful Dodger,” is a side character, a cooler, streetwise kid who befriends the boy and teaches him how to pickpocket along the way. (In the Disney version, he’s a doggie played by Billy Joel who makes the girl doggies swoon as he swirls hot dog links around his neck like a scarf, dons sunglasses, and sings “Why should I worry?/ Why should I care?” while hopping from car to car on a busy NYC street.) Well, The Artful Dodger, a new eight-episode limited series which premieres November 29, is Dodger’s story—and brace yourselves, because it sure ain’t Disney. (Well, technically it’s on Hulu and Disney+, but you get the idea.)
You see, Dodger gets arrested before the book even ends; he just goes to jail and is never heard from again. This series picks up in the 1850s, 15 years following that event, after Dodge (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) has been busted out of jail, because a guy was impressed with his quick, pickpocket-y fingers and trained him to be a military surgeon—on a boat, no less. Dawkins discovers his true calling, and has taken up practice in an Australian hospital. And dudes, surgery in this hospital is wild. Random men off the street can come in and watch as people get hacked apart and stitched together. And yes, that means we, the audience, get to watch this, too. We see a leg amputation right out of the gate. It’s a character-defining moment for old Jack, though. As he’s being a good little showman for his weird, shouting crowd, bragging to them about how fast he’s gonna stitch this guy, he leans over to the patient and quietly advises him on how to bear the pain, assuring him how quickly it will be over, revealing that the swift stitching isn’t purely some cool jock move, but a compassionate act as well. This is our guy.
But you know what else this guy does? Gamble. Apparently being a surgeon in those days paid in room and board only. He had to make actual money elsewhere, and he makes his by being a bad boy. When Dodge gets cheated in a card game, he suddenly owes 20-something pounds, which he cannot pay, and the punishment for failing to cough up this cash is getting his own hand chopped right off.
Fortunately, his one-time mentor and key villain in Oliver Twist, Norbert Fagin, who’s presumed hanged in the book, steps up for Dodger with some ex-con assignment. Convicts from Britain were sent to the Australian colony back then, and this is how Dodger and Fagin (David Thewlis) are reunited. Fagin takes on the role of Dodger’s servant and convinces his former protégé to get back into the thievery game to pay off that debt of his. So there’s the premise. It’s a doozy, but the writing is suture tight, the lines are quippy, the acting is solid, and it’s an enjoyable watch. And we haven’t even talked about Lady Belle yet.
Belle (Maia Mitchell) is the governor’s daughter, a bookish wannabe surgeon who’s obsessed with The Lancet, geeked on surgical innovations like ether and carbolic acid, and has no interest in the irritating suitors her dad keeps sending her way. The one we do get to meet is a terrible aspiring poet—a Wordsworth stan who doesn’t even seem to realize other poets exist and shows up to provide some comic relief as he annoys the disinterested Belle or shares some cringey courtship scenes with her boy crazy sister Fanny. Belle is a great character, quick-witted and clever, an appropriate foil for our boy Dodge, whom she blackmails into training her as a surgeon, a male-only profession in their day.
And can we just say that there is some serious heat between these two? In the four episodes screened for critics, they barely even touch. But man, even when he doctors up a burn on her leg, it is steamy. When he tells her she’s done well after aiding him in surgery, the lusty tension radiates off of them. Who knew the kid from Love Actually would get roles like this someday.
The dynamic between Fagin and Dodge is a rich one, too. Fagin leans so hard on the “I’m basically your dad” card, which Dawkins outright rejects, because he left him to rot in jail and everything. In a weird way, Fagin is … loveable? He seems to care for Jack, even as it remains altogether possible that, at any moment, he might somehow betray him again. It’s kind of like a Yondu/Peter Quill thing. Sort of. We guess we’ll see where it goes, but it is touching to see Fagin come through for Dodge in some significant ways, even if we know that he remains kind of a bastard all the while.
So what do we have here: a compelling setting, characters we can root for, ever-heightening stakes, and rich dialogue? Sounds good so far. The one potential downside is that the whole Dickens connection can feel a bit superimposed sometimes, as if the creators had an idea for a series about a surgeon in gold-rush era Australia forced to return to his pickpocketing past, then worked in a connection to some recognizable IP. However, this is pretty easily forgiven. If that got it made, then good. And it could very well be the case that this whole story did arise from genuine curiosity about the two most popular Oliver Twist characters—that folks disinterested in little “wet lettuce” Oliver, a character Dawkins and Fagin claim nobody likes (but also apparently the guy who pardoned Fagin) dreamed up something cooler and grittier for the less fortunate guys in the book. Either way, let’s welcome Doctor Dodger. He worms his way into our hearts in this series, and he didn’t even have to sing or wear shades.