Are you in the mood for, or – as you tear your eyes from the Iowa results and assorted other horrors – in desperate need of distraction? Something escapist that will require little in the way of close attention or emotional investment? You are? Then walk this way to Disney’s light, breezy sequel to Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist – The Artful Dodger starring Thomas Brodie-Sangster as the erstwhile pickpocket and David Thewlis (on top form) as his legendary former boss Fagin.
At the end of Dickens’s tale, the indefatigable Jack Dawkins is at last caught, and sentenced to transportation to Australia for stealing a silver snuff box. The show’s creators, James McNamara, David Maher and David Taylor, pick up the story 15 years later, by which time Dodger has found a way to put his nimble fingers to better use and is making a name for himself as an up-and-coming surgeon in the penal colony of Port Victory. It is, unfortunately, a largely unsalaried role and to make ends meet, he plays cards. Yet more unfortunately, he is cheated by crooked harbourmaster Darius Cracksworth (Tim Minchin) and, as we meet him, needs to find £26 by the end of the week or lose a hand. And a surgeon, even in a Victorian penal colony when the job mostly comprises the ability to hack off a limb in under 30 seconds, requires both.
