History Series / TheArtfulDodger

* TheAlcoholic: Professor [=MacGregor=] can put away a staggering amount of alcohol, with even Fagin commenting that he could practically drink the ocean. It's played for drama in that the Prof operates while drunk, killing one man in the first episode (and blaming Jack) and almost doing it again later on.

* ArmorPiercingResponse: Near the end of "Bully in the Alley" Belle tries to remonstrate with Red (after delivering her baby) by giving her a mini-lecture on their thievery. Red shuts her up by telling her that her her family are the biggest thieves in the whole port.

** Belle's sister Fanny is always being upstaged by Belle, embarrassed, and being made the butt of some punchline or other.

* ButtMonkey: Jack in the first half of the series can't go an episode without being assaulted, blackmailed, humiliated, or scapegoated. In the second half, things turn more positively for him as he starts getting back at others and standing up for himself, regaining his dignity and will in the process. Meanwhile, Darius becomes the one targeted for pain, torture, and humiliation as his karma comes to hit him back ''hard''.

** Later, though Sneed is willing to ''kill'' Dawkins in a duel after the two's rivalry and mutual hatred gets out of hand, he immediately backs down once Governor Fox instead orders their Second's[[note]]the individuals they both bring as witness, to negotiate a last minute amicable resolution, and to inspect the weapons prior to the duel[[/note]] to take their place, as while he might resent Dawkins for his station and attitude enough to be willing to kill ''him'', he's not willing to see Fagin or his own second suffer for their rivalry. [[spoiler:He also recognises that the Professor is too incompetent to be trusted with his own amputation after Fagin "accidentally" shoots him in the leg during the duel, and not only reinstates Jack as co-surgeon but also gives permission for the modern procedures he's refused to adopt to please the Professor.]]

** Her father, partly thanks to Gaines' influence, sees it as an ugly but unfortunately needed excess of force due to the fact the populace are, for the most part, convicts. The arrests being made are against Bushrangers, who's holdups have resulted in the murder of soldiers during many robberies, so while their deaths are tragic, they're not simply innocent victims.

A 2023 TV series whose premise is that after the events of ''Literature/OliverTwist,'' the character of the Artful Dodger escaped from prison in England, became a naval surgeon, and then moved to Australia to practice medicine. Stars Creator/ThomasBrodieSangster as Jack Dawkins (The Artful Dodger), Creator/DavidThewlis as Fagin, and Creator/MaiaMitchell as Lady Belle Fox.

!!Examples of:

* UptownGirl: Lady Belle Fox, daughter of the colony's governor, and Jack Dawkins, a lower class doctor who is also a former sailor and escaped convict.

** Dawkins, meanwhile, believes all lives are worth saving and simply being a criminal does not mean they deserve to be beaten to death by guards. Furthermore, there is an obvious class divide at play, as said bushrangers are largely motivated by both survival and rebellion against an authoritarian military occupation, with many only stealing because they can't afford to live any other way. Red, also, brings up the fact many are actually indigenous Australians who are in the midst of having their land and culture taken from them, and their crimes are largely acts of geurilla warfare to defend themselves from what they see as an EvilColonialist invasion. Though Belle takes the moral stance that theft is theft, she bluntly points out Governor Fox and her family are the biggest thieves in Port Victory for invading their country and stealing their land.

* HateSink: Darius Cracksworth, the harbour master, is a corrupt cheat who starts the show off cheating Dawkins at cards then trying to have his hand cut off as repayment of this debt, is sleeping with his best friend's wife, is abusive towards the town's sex workers (and even tries to kill Rotty for standing up to him), and treats his lackeys like shit. When Fagin realises they need to frame someone else for the robbery because there's no way to move the stolen cash, Darius is the first and only choice because he's so much of an asshole nobody would miss him. Notably, while Sneed and Professor [=McGregor=] are pompous and outdated [[EveryoneHasStandards they both demonstrate standards]], while Gaines is an [[TheMentallyDisturbed unstable]] [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalist]] who enjoys hanging people far too much [[WellIntentionedExtremist but still genuinely believes he's righteous and that those he kills are guilty enough to deserve it]], and Red, the local Bushranger, is motivated largely by fighting the EvilColonist military taking her home. Even [[spoiler:Oliver Twist]], though he steals the gold shipment while planning to leave Fagin and Jack implicated and left to deal with the fallout (on top of having Governor Fox blamed for losing it, and thus losing his position), we know from the canon he genuinely UsedToBeASweetKid. Darius however, remains the only antagonist without some standards, or reasons behind his actions other than greed and cruelty. Which, makes him becoming a total ButtMonkey in the second half [[KickTheSonOfABitch so rewarding to see]].

** Lady Jane Fox, Belle's mother, who is a ProperLady that is once described as a "Harridan" (essentially, an archaic way of calling her a Karen), yet is softly but notably supportive of her daughter's SpiritedYoungLady nature, and is a touch less judgemental towards Dawkins than the rest of their class are (though only a touch, and when she realises that Belle and Jack are falling for one-another, she firmly warns Jack to stay away from her as she cannot let her daughter marry below her station). She also lampshades how unreasonable Gaines' hangings are, points out the shoddy design of the port's sewer system, and in general is clearly where Belle gets her spirit from.
** Downplayed with her husband. Governor Fox himself is still something of an UpperClassTwit who's got his biases, and is very much guilty of cronyism with how he runs the Port and is ''very'' easily influenced by Gaines and [=McGregor=], but he still tends to listen to his daughter and his wife when they point out the obvious to him and clearly ''wants'' to be a reasonable authority figure.

* TheScapegoat: Jack, to just about everyone. In the first episode, the professor in charge of the hospital gets drunk and attempts to perform a delicate surgery on a patient, outright pulling rank on Jack to make him hand the surgery over to him; in his drunkenness, he knicks the wrong artery, and when Jack tries to intervene to save the patient (unsuccessfully), the professor [[NeverMyFault then blames Jack entirely]] for ''distracting'' him and attempts to have him fired, despite Jack being demonstratively the best surgeon in the hospital.

* BreakingTheGlassCeiling: Lady Belle Fox wants to become a woman surgeon. In the 1850s.

* HateSink: Darius Cracksworth, the harbour master, is a corrupt cheat who starts the show off cheating Dawkins at cards then trying to have his hand cut off as repayment of this debt, is sleeping with his best friend's wife, is abusive towards the town's sex workers (and even tries to kill Rotty for standing up to him), and treats his lackeys like shit. When Fagin realises they need to frame someone else for the robbery because there's no way to move the stolen cash, Darius is the first and only choice because he's so much of an asshole nobody would miss him.
* IllGirl: Lady Belle, who from the beginning is shown suffering chest pains and bouts of dizziness. Her interest in medicine and surgery specifically is seemingly born from her attempts to understand her condition, which in turn turned into an interest in helping others.

** Sneed is a pompous, classist, egotistical jerk with terrible bedside manner who antagonises Jack (never mind that he all but abandons a patient he mis-performed a surgery on so he can be celebrated for said surgery, and later outs Jack's [[spoiler:inability to read]]), and when Raines questions him about Jack's gambling debt and possible involvement in the soldier's pay, a GenrySavvy viewer might expect him to throw Jack under the bus, especially as they're both competing for head surgeon. Instead, he firstly defends the fact that the surgeons aren't paid and its unfair to judge them for how they support themselves outside of it, and then insists Jack could never be involved in such sordid business. He also makes a point to state the surgery wouldn't be able to function without him, and while he does contradict Jack's alibi [[ItMakesSenseInContext about how he got covered in guts]], it's just him answering truthfully.

* TheMentallyDisturbed: Captain Gaines, who combines this with TheFundamentalist to a scary combination. For the most part, he's an overly noose-happy and uncomfortably intense InspectorJavert. But in his confessions, which he apparently makes so often he at one point claims its been ''fourteen hours'' since his last one, he expresses delusional beliefs, which fuel his murderous desire to hang pretty much everyone in Port Victory under some degree of criminality. He also shows a weak grasp of reality, believing his adulterous wife was a pious and innocent woman until the influence of the port turned her into an adulterer, and that the smell seeping into town is the result of all the "evil" in the port, rather than the poorly designed sewage tunnels and Ambergris being smuggled underneath.

** Lady Jane Fox, Belle's mother, who is a ProperLady that is once described as a "Harridan" (essentially, an archaic way of calling her a Karen), yet is softly but notably supportive of her daughter's SpiritedYoungLady nature, and is a touch less judgemental towards Dawkins than the rest of their class are. She also lampshades how unreasonable Gaines' hangings are, points out the shoddy design of the port's sewer system, and in general is clearly where Belle gets her spirit from.
** Governor Fox himself is still something of an UpperClassTwit who's got his biases, and is very much guilty of cronyism with how he runs the Port, but he still tends to listen to his daughter and his wife when they point out the obvious to him and clearly ''wants'' to be a reasonable authority figure.

* HateSink:
** Darius Cracksworth, the harbour master, is a corrupt cheat who starts the show off cheating Dawkins at cards then trying to have his hand cut off as repayment of this debt, is sleeping with his best friend's wife, is abusive towards the town's sex workers (and even tries to kill Rotty for standing up to him), and treats his lackeys like shit. When Fagin realises they need to frame someone else for the robbery because there's no way to move the stolen cash, Darius is the first and only choice because he's so much of an asshole nobody would miss him.
** Professor [=McGregor=] is an old-fashioned, sexist, classist, cronyist drunkard, who thinks his 1-in-6 ''survival'' rate in surgery is a ''bragging point''; he abhors 'modern' medical practices such as cleaning wounds and anesthetic, believing that blood and pain are an important part of the process, operates while drunk, and blames others for his mistakes.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Sneed is a pompous, classist, egotistical jerk with terrible bedside manner who antagonises Jack (never mind that he all but abandons a patient he mis-performed a surgery on so he can be celebrated for said surgery, and later outs Jack's [[spoiler:inability to read]]), and when Raines questions him about Jack's gambling debt and possible involvement in the soldier's pay, a GenrySavvy viewer might expect him to throw Jack under the bus, especially as they're both competing for head surgeon. Instead, he firstly defends the fact that the surgeons aren't paid and its unfair to judge them for how they support themselves outside of it, and then insists Jack could never be involved in such sordid business. He also makes a point to state the surgery wouldn't be able to function without him, and while he does contradict Jack's alibi [[ItMakesSenseInContext about how he got covered in guts]], it's just him answering truthfully.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Sneed is a pompous, egotistical jerk with terrible bedside manner who antagonises Jack, and when Raines questions him about Jack's gambling debt and possible involvement in the soldier's pay, a GenrySavvy viewer might expect him to throw Jack under the bus, especially as they're both competing for head surgeon. Instead, he firstly defends the fact that the surgeons aren't paid and its unfair to judge them for how they support themselves outside of it, and then insists Jack could never be involved in such sordid business. He also makes a point to state the surgery wouldn't be able to function without him, and while he does contradict Jack's alibi [[ItMakesSenseInContext about how he got covered in guts]], it's just him answering truthfully.

* LadykillerInLove: Jack Dawkins

* UpperClassTwit: With exception to Lady Belle, this seems to be the vast majority of the upper crust in the colony, much to her chagrin as she's expected to marry one of them but finds each one boorish, unintelligent, and self-important. Jack also has to deal with this, both with his patients and his supervisor.

* OhCrap: The reaction of Dawkins and Fagin when they see that of all the people in the world to oversee the shipment they're planning to rob, the bank just had to send [[spoiler: Oliver Twist.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler: Oliver Twist]] appears to be a nice friendly man, still on an honest path. It turns out [[spoiler: he set up this entire robbery against Fagin, noting that his experience made him realize Fagin and Dodger were right all along in how being honest is no way to make it in life. Fagin openly compliments Oliver on pulling off a scam he never saw coming.]]

* FrontierDoctor: Jack Dawkins is a doctor in a small hospital in rural 1850s Australia.

A 2023 TV series starring Creator/ThomasBrodieSangster, Creator/DavidThewlis, and Creator/MaiaMitchell. The series' premise is that after the events of ''Literature/OliverTwist,'' the character of the Artful Dodger escaped from prison in England, became a naval surgeon, and then moved to Australia to practice medicine.

A 2023 TV series starring Creator/ThomasBrodieSangster, Creator/DavidThewlis, and Creator/MaiaMitchell. The series' premise is that after the events of ''Literature/OliverTwist,'' the character of the Artful Dodger escaped from prison in England, became a naval surgeon, and then move to Australia to practice medicine.

A 2023 TV series starring Creator/ThomasBrodieSangster, Creator/DavidThewlis, and Creator/MaiaMitchell. The series is a non-canonical television sequel to Literature/OliverTwist. Its premise is that the character of the Artful Dodger escaped from prison in England, became a naval surgeon, and then move to Australia to practice medicine.

A 2023 TV series starring Creator/ThomasBrodieSangster, Creator/DavidThewlis, and Creator/MaiaMitchell. The series is a non-canonical television sequel to Literature/OliverTwist, whose premise is that the character of the Artful Dodger became a navy surgeon and then move to Australia to practice medicine.