The Artful Dodger is a 2023 Australian series streamed on Hulu and Disney+. It is a sequel of sorts to Oliver Twist.
After the events of the novel, the Artful Dodger escaped from prison in England, became a naval surgeon, and then moved to Australia to practice medicine. However, an old acquaintance of his, Fagin, resurfaces, forcing Jack back into a life of crime.
It stars Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Jack Dawkins (The Artful Dodger), David Thewlis as Fagin, and Maia Mitchell as Lady Belle Fox.
The Artful Dodger provides examples of:
- Adaptational Villainy: Oliver Twist, of all people. He's perfectly willing to frame Jack and Fagin, ruin the governor's career and steal the gold from his own employer so he can start a new life of his own. He even tells Fagin it was his fault for awakening his dark side.
- The Alcoholic: 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 doing it again later on to his own friend.
- Always Someone Better: Jack is this to Sneed, being a far more talented surgeon. Sneed is incredibly resentful of this, due to Jack's station and poor literacy, but it's shown repeatedly that deep down, he knows he's the better surgeon.
- Armor-Piercing Response: 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 family are the biggest thieves in the whole port, given that they're ruling over land stolen from the natives.
- The Artful Dodger: Naturally as it stars the Trope Namer, though in the show itself, local street urchin Charlie is a closer example. For Jack Dawkins himself, this is actually deconstructed by showing what an adult who grew up like this would be like; though he's been able to pull himself out of poverty, it was only by joining the military which left him with many scars, and his lower class origins still hold him back as he's passed over for consideration for head surgeon purely on the basis he's not part of the same Upper-Class Twit circles as his supervisor. While he was chipper as a child, all this has left him cynical as an adult as he can properly appreciate how terrible his life really was, and he's haunted still by the particularly traumatic experience of being arrested and sentenced to 15 years.
- Blatant Lies: Somewhat deconstructed in that while they're usually done humourously, the actual effect of both Jack and Fagin (usually the latter) doing this is usually just Digging Yourself Deeper with the already suspicious Gaines. A good example comes when Gaines unexpectedly turns up at the hospital asking questions and the two don't have time to coordinate stories. Subsequently, when he asks an innocuous question about Jack's siblings he plays it safe and says he's an only child. Fagin, on the other hand, can't help himself and says Jack has nine siblings of various ages with increasingly outlandish names, further raising Gaines' suspicions.
- Both Sides Have a Point: In "Bully in the Alley", this is how Belle sees the conflict that rises when Gaines's Police Brutality hospitalises most of the colony when raiding the tavern/brothel for bushrangers and other criminals.
- 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, whose holdups have resulted in the murder of soldiers during many robberies, so while their deaths are tragic, they're not simply innocent victims.
- 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, especially as they assaulted far more people than the ones they arrested. Furthermore, there is an obvious class divide at play, as said bushrangers are largely from the lower class and 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 guerrilla warfare to defend themselves from what they see as an Evil Colonialist invasion. Though Belle takes the moral stance that theft is theft, Red bluntly points out Governor Fox and her family are the biggest thieves in Port Victory for invading their country and stealing their land.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Lady Belle Fox wants to become a woman surgeon. In the 1850s. Which isn't quite as far-fetched as it might sound given that the first female surgeon Mary Edwards Walker
became a qualified surgeon around this time in real life. - Butt-Monkey:
- 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.
- Belle's sister Fanny is always being upstaged by Belle, embarrassed, and being made the butt of some punchline or other. The man she crushes on (Sneed) loves Belle, her romantic dreams are repeatedly mocked by her sister and her parents essentially treat her as an afterthought. Even her fiance, Oliver Twist, turns out to be a criminal in the end.
- Canon Character All Along: The mysterious thug Fagin is working with turns out to be Monks, Oliver Twist's criminal half-brother from the original book.
- Chekhov's Skill: At one point Belle has to walk Jack through a very risky aneurysm surgery - something that comes in very handy when Belle develops an aortic aneurysm and needs an operation in the finale.
- Commonality Connection: Jack clearly empathises with the lower class in the colony due to his background, including the ones he performs surgeries on and the convicts sent to Australia whose fate he's to decide. When performing surgery, though he puts on a show due to it being largely how he's paid in the first place, he takes a moment to quietly, sincerely assure the patients he's performing on that he will save them and try to make the surgery go by as quickly as possible to reduce their pain. Meanwhile, when a convict arrives with a particularly empathetic story, he's quick to assign them a comfortable job they're not qualified for but can learn on the job. This is seemingly part of the reason his boss doesn't like him, as his sense of empathy for such types makes him come off as a liberal and a radical to a particularly conservative environment.
- Dark Secret: Jack Dawkins' is that he's the Artful Dodger, the former leader of Fagin's gang of pickpocketing children from London, having escaped from prison where he was to rot for fifteen years. If his identity got out, he'd be executed as an escaped convict - something Oliver Twist holds over Fagin in the finale, having the evidence to prove it.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- 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 inability to read), and when Gaines questions him about Jack's gambling debt and possible involvement in the soldiers' pay, a Genre Savvy 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 it's 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 about how he got covered in guts, it's just him answering truthfully.
- 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 Secondsnote 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. 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.
- Sneed again, in the finale. Though he condescendingly misdiagnoses Belle's aortic aneurysm for, firstly, "womanly troubles" and then a simple ulcer (both due to sexist dismissal of her symptoms and the fact he knows if he were to perform the needed surgery on her he'd kill her), when he's pushed by Jane to interrupt Jack's attempt at saving her life, he point-blank refuses and insists Jack finish because he knows Jack is better than him. When Jack is dragged off immediately after finishing her stitching, he pointedly tells Jane that she's sentencing the best surgeon he's ever seen to his death.
- Professor McGregor, meanwhile, is even worse than Sneed in every way; aggressively sexist, proudly old-fashioned, takes pride in his ridiculously small success rate at surgery, regularly performs surgery while drunk and refuses basic patient care like cleaning and anesthetic, on top of blaming others for his own mistakes. However, when led to believe a pregnant woman and her child died during a C-sectionnote , he's heartbroken over the tragedy despite her being a notorious criminal sentenced to hanging, and aggressively kicks Gaines out of the hospital for his lack of sensitivity.
- Fagin might be shady beyond belief, but he draws the line at grave-robbing after his attempts at hiding the payroll land it in a body. Downplayed, in that he's still happy for Jack to do it.
- Jack flatly refuses to frame Darius for the payroll robbery if it means he'll be hanged, despite his utter suitability for the role. Later, he immediately attacks Monks for trying to kill Oliver earlier in life, as while he hates Oliver he definitely didn't want him dead.
- Evil Colonialist: Port Victory as a whole is viewed as this by Red, an indigenous bushranger targeting Governor Fox and Captain Gaines. It's not Gaines' defining trait, but he still definitely lives up to it.
- Fat Bastard: What Oliver Twist has become in the last 15 years.
- Female Misogynist: Belle's sister Fanny expresses these views, as part of her idolising the Proper Lady lifestyle. When Belle remarks about how men think they're better than women, she expresses that they're right, and that's why they're the ones in charge. Fanny is clearly kind of an idiot, and Belle is quick to point it out.
- Frontier Doctor: Jack Dawkins is a doctor in a small hospital in colonial 1850s Australia.
- The Fundamentalist: Captain Gaines. While most of Port Victory originate from Europe and thus are generally Christians, most view their faith rather casually, and even the local priest isn't so dedicated as to not be tempted to convert (and during confessions, he's mostly busy ogling the 1800s-era equivalent of pornography). Not Gaines, who brings up religious piety quite regularly, and views his duty as the commanding officer of the guard in the Port as a religious duty, to rid evils from the world. As he's also The Mentally Disturbed, this results in a deep level of delusion, paranoia, and a complete lack of mercy, hanging anyone he deems a criminal. When he learns that his best friend, Darius, has been sleeping with his wife and has the stolen soldiers' pay (due to Fagin framing him), even though he believes that he's been framed and instead thinks it was Fagin and Dawkins (but can't prove it), he still intends to hang Darius for "whatever charge [he] can think of" as punishment for sleeping with his wife (given Darius is a corrupt cheat who also tried to murder Rotty for mouthing back at him).
- Good Is Not Soft: While good is perhaps a generous term, it's still a shock when Fagin happily lets Red gun down Gaines to save Jack.
- Hate Sink: 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 they both demonstrate standards, while Gaines is an unstable fundamentalist who enjoys hanging people far too much 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 Evil Colonialist military taking her home. Even 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 Used to Be a Sweet Kid. 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 Butt-Monkey in the second half so rewarding to see.
- Hidden Depths: The governor is usually portrayed as a well-meaning but easily manipulated buffoon. And he is, but the start of "The Stitch Up" makes clear he's well aware he's trapped in a loveless marriage, with one daughter that essentially ignores him and another that's a semi-imbecile, and is depressed over all of it - which might explain why he's so massively apathetic most of the time.
- Ill Girl: 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.In the finale, it's revealed to be an aortic aneurism, which at the time was still yet to be treatable, though between Belle's research and his own invention, Jack is able to successfully perform.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Fagin; he's still an opportunistic conman who openly looks out for "number one", but he genuinely cares for Jack and is even willing to do time for him to make up for having abandoned him in the past.
- Jack himself is a Lovable Rogue of a surgeon, willing to join Fagin in various thefts, prone to anger and ego, and holds a lot of resentments. But he's kind to his patients, refuses to take a life or even be involved in such, and is a good hearted man deep down.
- Heavily downplayed with Sneed, to the point it's more brass than gold. He's a Smug Snake Upper-Class Twit who overcompensates for his resentment towards Jack by dismissing and antagonising him, never mind his demonstrated sexism streak; but he refuses to incriminate Jack in crime, and when the situation matters, he admits Jack is the superior surgeon.
- Ladykiller in Love: Jack Dawkins. He's shown sleeping with his nurse and outright states he's had a number of other trysts, but it becomes clear he has a mutual attraction with Belle.
- Mama Bear: Deconstructed with Lady Jane Fox, despite being otherwise a Reasonable Authority Figure. She cares a great deal for her daughters, especially Belle, and so wants to ensure she marries someone "deserving" of her station. So, not Jack Dawkins. However, not only does her need to protect her daughter mean keeping her away from a genuinely good man in favour of pushing her towards Upper-Class Twit types, but she also refuses to accept her daughter's genuine medical condition, preferring Sneed's far less serious misdiagnosis because it's more comforting to hear. Her determination to protect her daughter nearly leads to her daughter's death.
- The Mentally Disturbed: Captain Gaines, who mixes this with The Fundamentalist to a scary combination. For the most part, he's an overly noose-happy and uncomfortably intense Inspector Javert. But in his confessions, which he apparently makes so often he at one point claims it's been fourteen hours since his last one, he expresses delusional and paranoid 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. Most problematically, however, is he becomes obsessed with Jack Dawkins, believing him to be at the heart of every crime going on (which is overestimating both how involved Jack actually is and how willing his involvement is), and as his mental state degrades he becomes even more obsessed with hanging Jack.
- My Greatest Failure: Leaving Jack in prison is this for Fagin, as he's genuinely felt guilt for it ever since. His master plan in the series largely relies on roping Jack back into the criminal lifestyle not just because he needs his help, but because he plans to take Jack with him to riches as a means to repay what he did.
- Never Learned to Read: Jack. Or at least, he can't read very well. (It's implied that he may be dyslexic.)
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Oliver Twist plays up being a bumbling toff, as well as other tendencies like being a Big Eater and incompetent boss, and combines it into an act so good that Fagin doesn't realise he's the mastermind behind the gold theft until he directly sees him with Darius.
- Oh, Crap!:
- In the first episode alone, Dawkins reacts this way to seeing Fagin again, seeing his debtors in the street, and then seeing Belle holding the necklace Fagin lifted and put in his pocket.
- 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 Oliver Twist.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Sneed, who backs the outdated practices Professor McGregor enforces despite them clearly being needlessly brutal and harmful, because he just wants to get ahead in his career. This cracks when he himself needs surgery, and he recognises that the Professor is liable to kill him on the operating table if he goes through with it.
- Public Domain Character: Jack Dawkins (a.k.a. The Artful Dodger), Fagin, and Oliver Twist
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Lady Jane Fox, Belle's mother, who is a Proper Lady 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 Spirited Young Lady nature, and is a touch less judgmental 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. Unfortunately, it becomes rather Subverted after she catches Jack in bed with Belle, due to the times she massively overreacts, and refuses to take Jack and Belle seriously about their diagnosis of her condition due to the less competent Sneed misdiagnosing her due to his sexism and reluctance to perform a delicate surgery.
- Downplayed with her husband. Governor Fox himself is still something of an Upper-Class Twit who's got his biases who's clearly out of his depth, 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. This is more apparent in their parenting, as Fox is willing to believe Belle about her illness and takes her and Jack's diagnosis more seriously, and when Jack performs the surgery to save her life, he's notably not threatening him or demanding the less competent Sneed take over.
- The Resenter:
- Sneed towards Jack. It's painfully obvious Jack is the far better surgeon, able to perform delicate surgeries far quicker with a far better mortality rate, on top of having far better skill with the scalpel. But as Jack is a barely literate lower class sailor, Sneed, who was born into wealth, not only looks down on him, but he can't stand the fact Jack is better than him.
- Jack towards upper society in general, due to his experiences as The Artful Dodger Trope Namer in his youth, and the struggles he faces as an adult who, despite being the most talented surgeon in the country, is passed over for promotion in favour of the more well-connected Sneed purely due to his background, never mind other humiliations. When he's tempted to return to crime, much of it is motivated out of a desire to get revenge on the upper class. This makes his attraction to Lady Belle quite complicated, as he both loves her but also resents a lot of the privileges she was born into.
- The Scapegoat: Jack, for Professor McGregor and Sneed early on in the series. 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 nicks the wrong artery, and when Jack tries to intervene to save the patient (unsuccessfully), the professor then blames Jack entirely for distracting him and attempts to have him fired, despite Jack being demonstratively the best surgeon in the hospital.
- Sentenced to Down Under: How Fagin meets up again with his former protege, Jack Dawkins.
- Smug Snake: Sneed, having been raised in the upper crust with everything provided for him, has an inflated view of himself, and his surgical abilities. A point is made that he's not incompetent, he's just a mediocre doctor, but one who is treated like he's a far better doctor than he is.
- Spirited Young Lady: Lady Belle Fox, daughter of the Governor with a deep intelligence and interest in medical science, who is quickly bored by the Upper-Class Twit types she's being courted by.
- Spoiled Sweet: Belle's sister Fanny is an Upper-Class Twit to the core, distinctly not very bright, with shades of Cloud Cuckoo Lander. Nonetheless, at heart she's a kind girl who cares for her sister in her own strange way, even if she's constantly being rebuffed.
- Straw Misogynist: Much of the Upper-Class Twit class express varying degrees of dismissal of women, and are consistently presented as idiots and assholes for it. Sneed actually views himself as a "modern man" because he believes women should be trained in firearms too (but still believes that Belle should marry him simply because he has money and has basically no awareness of her desires as a person, and misunderstands her sarcastic remark about men being the ones free to make fortunes as if she's stating a simple fact). Professor McGregor and his friend Tinkler, after heavy drinking, go on a long tangent about male superiority of women and "prove" it by lifting two heavy boxes, something they doubt any woman can do, resulting in obvious straining for the Professor and Tinkler developing a hernia that, due to the Professor's malpractice when attempting surgery on him, results in his death.
- Street Smart: Jack. He is, after all, The Artful Dodger.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Jack Dawkins. While as The Artful Dodger, he was already the best pickpocket in London; fifteen years later he's now a qualified Navy Surgeon and former officer, indicating he's had a serious rank up.
- Oliver Twist appears to be a nice friendly man, still on an honest path. It turns out 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.
- Upper-Class Twit: 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 some of his patients, and his colleagues; the head surgeon is an outdated misogynist and drunkard who thinks a 1 in 6 survival rate is a good record worth bragging about and that patients feeling pain is "God's will", and gets his friend killed by misperforming a surgery.
- Uptown Girl: 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.
- Villains Want Mercy: Shot in the chest by Red, a desperate Gaines begs Jack to save him. He doesn't oblige, though it's more out of shock at what's just happened than any explicit cruelty.
