What is it with TV shows set in the 19th century and their obsession with sawing off limbs? Paramount+’s The Doll Factory recently treated viewers to the nauseating spectacle of surgeons competing to hack off patients’ legs in under a minute – and following in its wake is Disney+’s The Artful Dodger, which ups the ante by opening with a gruesome operation carried out in less than 30 seconds.
If the name of the show is familiar, then yes it refers to that Artful Dodger, ripped from the pages of Dickens and now all grown up. In this show, the top-hatted pickpocket from Oliver Twist is now putting those famous fast fingers to good use. Dodge (played by the perpetually youthful Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is making a living as a surgeon Down Under. Having been left to rot in a prison cell at the end of Oliver Twist by Fagin, he was rescued by a ship’s doctor and has since gone straight.
