Another interesting TV adaptation of Dickens book with William Miller giving a performance of a more up-and-at-'em Oliver and somewhat quite intelligent for his age. However, here the Artful Dodger is played by attractive Adam Arnold who is certainly the best looking Dodger I've seen. So many versions reflective of Dickens genius as a storyteller.

My Movie Rating: 7 / 10

Well, this project was doomed from the start, because the BBC decided that, instead of telling Dickens' story, they would 'update' his novel, 'for the modern era', or some such guff. This hatchet job fell to soap writer Sarah Phelps. Unfortunately, she has replaced Dickens' characters with grotesque stereotypes, and everything about pre-Victorian society itself has been absurdly exaggerated. The effect of this caricature, of course, is to congratulate the audience on its moral superiority to the pre-Victorian era, as though we now live in some sort of utopian society, from which pinnacle of moral Enlightenment we can look down on the pre-Victorians as a bunch of vicious, racist, sexist bigots. Oliver himself has been transformed in this production into an assertive, self-righteous and moralising campaigner against the injustices of his society - a privileged 21st century boy dropped into the 19th century. The scene where he is brought before the parish Board is typical - the Board is presented in a completely grotesque fashion, and Oliver is presented as talking back to them and criticising their moral judgement from his loftier moral standpoint. When finally at the end of the last episode Oliver turns to the camera and smirks like a cat that has got all the cream, one just longs to drown the nauseating self-righteous little prig. Indeed, from the moment that Monks declares, at the end of the first episode, that he wants Oliver wiped off the face of the Earth, I was rooting for Monks! Dickens' character of the Dodger has been scrubbed in favour of a stroppy teenager; and Timothy Spall plays Fagin as slimy and creepy - certainly not Dickens' character. The script insists on making a point about anti-semitism in an incredibly heavy-handed way - in this version, Fagin is hanged because he refuses to renounce his Jewish faith to the courtroom - thus becoming a Jewish martyr! In 1985 the BBC produced a perfect miniseries of Oliver Twist, a stunning piece of television. What a pity that the Beeb is now so dominated by its PC, progressivist, pseudo-liberal ideology, that it is incapable any longer of producing a decent historical drama.

My Movie Rating: 1 / 10

One of the best. Definitely top 3

My Movie Rating: 10 / 10