It’s Oliver... with a twıst

New BBC series Dodger, a fun take on Fagin and his gang, will have you begging for more

Before there was Oliver Twist there was Fagin, his underling the Artful Dodger and their gang of child pickpockets. And while Oliver eventually escaped grinding poverty to live in middle-class heaven with his newly discovered grandfather, the hell of Dickensian London was to continue for the rest of them.

It’s perhaps surprising that in the more than 20 screen versions of the Charles Dickens novel to date, the world of Fagin’s gang has never been properly explored. But that is set to change with the BBC’S new series Dodger, which is essentially Oliver Twist without Oliver. Made by the BBC’S children’s wing CBBC, it was such a hit on that channel that it’s now getting an airing on BBC1.

We first meet Dodger far from his London home after he’s been bought from his orphanage and taken up North to work in a cotton mill. But he’s desperately unhappy and pines for the only place he’s ever felt a smidgeon of love. He manages to run away but when he gets back to London, he finds the orphanage has burnt down. He has nowhere to go until he’s introduced to Fagin and is incorporated into his gang of waifs and strays picking pockets and evading the police.

The cast includes

Christopher Eccleston,

David Threlfall, Alex

Kingston and Frances

Barber but the real starischarismatic youngster Billy

Jenkins as Dodger. It’s quite a change for Billy, whose first role was as a young Prince Charles in The Crown when he was seven.

Now 14, Billy says Dodger is a lot closer to his personality than Prince Charles. ‘He’s mischievous and cheeky,’ says Billy. ‘But I think he has a heart of gold. He wears this battered old hat which I just love and odd boots, which was my idea. We do see him get up to all sorts of stuff but he does have a moral compass and he’s more good than bad. It’s just that he’s also trying to survive.’

For Christopher Eccleston, who plays Fagin, Dodger’s focus on his gang redresses a balance. ‘The musical Oliver! was one of my favourite films as a child, but I never engaged with the character of Oliver,’ he says. ‘Dickens created the story as a vehicle to visit the underclasses and I think that’s why Dodger, Fagin and Nancy are more engaging. He had more empathy for them.’

And while Christopher’s Fagin is as forbidding as you might expect from the acclaimed actor, he also raises a few laughs along the way. ‘I’m seen as the most miserable actor on the planet,’ he admits. ‘I’ve played a lot of very serious roles so I’ve never had an opportunity to develop any comic bones. But I love the idea of doing that, it feels like a breath of fresh air to try to learn new skills.’

Ron Moody’s Fagin in Oliver! left a big impression on him when he was a young boy in a workingclass family in Lancashire. ‘His performance was magical. You could see this man is lonely, he’s sad. He has lost tragically and suffered racism and bigotry.’

Fagin is Jewish of course, and Christopher took the role at a time when there’s been heated debate over whether minorities should be played only by people from that minority. And Fagin isn’t just any Jewish character; along with Shakespeare’s Shylock he’s seen as one of the key antisemitic creations in British literature. ‘I’d never have taken the role if I detected any antisemitic themes in our version,’ says Christopher, 57. ‘And I don’t think our writers would write it that way. We have a character who wears a yarmulke skullcap and is proud of his Jewish background.’

To prepare for the role he delved into the experiences of British Jewry, reading books and talking to historian Simon Schama. ‘I don’t think there should be a limitation upon the imagination; non-jewish actors should be able to play Jewish roles. I became an actor in order to play anything. And I think it’s fair to say this Fagin is a complete retelling.’

Dodger, tomorrow, 3.15pm, BBC1. The series is also available on iplayer.