The Artful Dodger review: turning Dickens into an Aussie caper proves a treat in Season 2

If there’s a way to give the work of Charles Dickens a new spin, someone has likely tried it over the past two centuries. On Australian television in the 90s, there was even an advertisement for packet-mix recipe bases that riffed on the English author’s Oliver Twist.

Three decades later, Aussie made and set series The Artful Dodger follows the same lead – swapping recipe ideas for a mix of The Knick-style historical medical antics, Shakespearean romance and a Bridgerton-esque attitude to period drama.

While finding a fresh route into a beloved novel by a famed author while also embracing recent pop-culture trends is a familiar approach to page-to-screen adaptations these days, this take on Dickens’ 1838 novel – charismatically led by Love Actually and The Queen’s Gambit’s Thomas Brodie-Sangster – fits the template cleverly and entertainingly.

Delightfully, after a debut run that left audiences wanting more, the show’s second season perfectly picks up where its first batch of episodes left off.

Jack Dawkins has left London behind

As audiences initially saw back in the first season, released in November 2023, The Artful Dodger takes place 15 years after the events of Oliver Twist. While the book’s titular orphan made an appearance in that first season, the focus of the series is firmly on his pickpocket pal Jack Dawkins.

In that intervening decade and a half, Jack traded the thievery for a stint in the navy, where his fleet fingers came in handy as a surgeon. His travels have now brought him to 1850s-era Australia, and to practising his craft in the fictional town of Port Victory.

Relocating to the other side of the world is a tried-and-tested method for trying to start anew, but the arrival of Norbert Fagin (David Thewlis) complicated matters, as did Jack’s budding relationship with Lady Belle Fox (Maia Mitchell), the daughter of the governor (Damien Garvey) and an aspiring doctor herself.

Also in the same category: whether anyone with a criminal past can ever truly escape it when they’re residing in a penal colony.

A charming return for the artful dodger

As season two begins, that question doesn’t appear to have a positive answer, with Jack awaiting a date with the noose. That he avoids the hangman is no surprise; The Artful Dodger needs its namesake, as well as a rationale for the first of the season’s rollicking, impressively choreographed chase and action sequences set to 20th and 21st century tunes, such as Blur’s Song 2.

Jack’s romance with Belle is threatened as a result, however. In sparing his life, the governor and his stern wife Lady Jane (Susie Porter) forbid any contact with their daughter. Henry Boxer (Luke Bracey), the settlement’s new inspector, is on hand to ensure compliance, while also suspecting Dodge as the culprit responsible for a spate of deaths.

If Belle flouts her parents’ decree, she’ll also face consequences. Being permitted to pursue her medical training – officially, not just via her own studies – in her quest to become the first female doctor is contingent upon steering clear of Jack.

Fagin couldn’t be more thrilled with the turn of events, which he hopes will free up his former apprentice to assist with a new gambit selling land in the middle of the country. That said, he isn’t completely against the Fox family. With his help, Belle’s younger sister Lady Fanny (Lucy-Rose Leonard) turns her attention to swindling.

Exceptional casting delivers a very watchable trio

Medical mayhem, run-ins with the law, star-crossed lovers thrust apart, class clashes, father-son dynamics, heists and schemes, battling sexism, revenge plots, family secrets, romantic rivals, catastrophic outbreaks, murderers on the loose: in its plotting and pace alike, The Artful Dodger’s second season surges forward frenetically.

The show’s current writing team – co-creator and head scribe James McNamara (The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore), fellow returnee Dan Knight (Irreverent), season one supporting cast member Miranda Tapsell (Top End Bub) and fellow actor Kate Mulvany (Upright) – never forget that Jack’s complex bonds with Fagin and Belle are the heart of the fun series, or that second chances remain its most potent theme.

In season one, Fagin and Belle were Jack’s version of a devil and angel endeavouring to push him in opposing directions, towards vastly different visions for his Australian existence. That remains in season two. But in a show painted with hues of brown thanks to its detailed production design, more shades of grey start to colour its main trio, Fagin and Belle especially.

Enlisting Brodie-Sangster as its lead proved one of The Artful Dodger’s smartest decisions. From the series’ very first episode, his fresh-faced looks provided a canny mask to plaster over Jack’s lifetime of troubles.

Pairing its lead with the always-exceptional Thewlis, who revels in Fagin’s wiliness and loquaciousness, and with the impassioned and determined Mitchell, continues to be just as vital. Particularly as the season takes Belle further out of her comfort zone and into Fagin’s orbit, Brodie-Sangster, Thewlis and Mitchell are one TV’s most-watchable trios.

Watch The Artful Dodger trailer

The savvy universe of The Artful Dodger

Reimagining or building upon Oliver Twist isn’t an easy feat, or guaranteed to pay off. Two years before The Artful Dodger premiered, British film Twist – featuring Jude Law’s son Raff as Oliver, Rita Ora as Dodge and Michael Caine as Fagin – struggled woefully with the same task.

At its outset, The Artful Dodger made an important choice. As is given more emphasis in its winsome romp of a second season, the series doesn’t limit itself to just one Dickens novel as inspiration, or just to Dickens – and smartly so.

When a staging of Romeo and Juliet is weaved into the story, the show winks and nods heartily (and amusingly gives Fagin the chance to rebadge the Bard as ‘wobbly stick’). And when Benedict Hardie joins the cast as a well-known character from another Dickens classic, The Artful Dodger reinforces not only its playfulness but also its ambition.

While superheroes sparked the present obsession with on-screen universes that connect different sources and characters, franchise fatigue has been their biggest foe of late. Here, expanding an already-inventive and charming twist on a literary great by dipping further into the author’s bibliography is a decision that proves suitably shrewd and thoroughly captivating.

Season two of The Artful Dodger premieres on Disney+ from 10 February.

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