Oliver Twist Pt. 1
The first of two 90-minute installments of Oliver Twist premiered last night on Masterpiece Classic. The first episode played out much like the first half of a Dickens novel, with an abundance of characters whom one knows nothing about, questions that demand to be answered, and a tangled mess of loose ends that one hopes will soon be set straight.
Having never read Oliver Twist, I don’t know how faithful to the novel this adaptation is, but from scanning some of the early reviews, it appears that it is not nearly as true to the book as Dickens purists would have liked. Whether or not this is an improvement remains to be seen, but the film was certainly fast-paced and exciting, keeping me on the edge of my seat wondering what trouble Oliver would find himself in next and listening for any clues 
that revealed a little more about the sly Dodger, domineering Sikes, enigmatic Fagin, and good-hearted Nancy, as well as any information as to the relationship between Rose, Mr. Brownlow, Edward, and Oliver. In doing this I found my one significant complaint about the film: the music is too distracting. The same sort of raw, edgy music was used in Wuthering Heights, giving the film the very rough, primitive, and passionate feel that made it so great; where the score complements the action and emotions in WH, it overpowers in Oliver Twist. Taken with the fact that most of the characters speak in an unrefined dialect that is difficult to understand and rarely encountered in most costume dramas (at least those concerned with the upper or middle crusts of society), the overemphasized music is especially troublesome.
Part 1 ended at a very climactic point, with gunshots being fired and Oliver crying out; obviously the main character doesn’t die halfway through the story, but what will his injuries lead to? And who was the man whose house Sikes and Oliver entered? Part 2 promises to be just as riveting as Part 1.
If you missed it, you can watch Part 1 online here until March 1.
Some reviews of Part 1 (I believe the first and last contain some character spoilers, so read at own risk):
Oliver Twist’s classic themes of good and evil are deliberately blurred in this modern retelling of the Charles Dickens classic. Literary archvillains like Fagin and Bill Sikes, once glaring examples of moral corruption and criminal psychopathy, become mere byproducts of their time. In fact, director Coky Giedroyc’s grittier, reality-based approach to Sarah Phelps’ adaptation contrasts sharply the popular and nostalgic musical account “Oliver!” Nevertheless, this version does stay true to Dickens’ original intent to call attention to social evils in harsh times.
USA Today: “PBS’ turn of ‘Oliver Twist’ is ever so timely”
Austen in good times, Dickens in bad: PBS is on to something…
Certainly this latest adaptation does its best to tweak the story for a modern audience, sharpening the class edges and probing into the psychology of the darker characters. The approach does at times seem more Sweeney Todd than Oliver Twist, but the cast (led by Harry Potter’s Timothy Spall as Fagin) is first-rate, as is the production itself.
The Boston Globe: “A Twist and more in Dickens tale”
And the first Dickens adaptation, “Oliver Twist,” bodes well enough for the rest of the season. The two-part miniseries, which begins tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2, makes missteps aplenty, with tone and plot changes from the novel that will likely offend purists. But it nonetheless has a warm spirit and an original vision, which is more than I can say for Roman Polanski’s rote 2005 version.
The Houston Chronicle: “Masterpiece puts its spin on Oliver Twist”
From spot-on casting and one extraordinary performance after another, to a bold adaptation by Sarah Phelps, to Coky Giedroyc’s energizing direction, to a toe-tapping musical score (that probably doesn’t belong here, but fie on that — it’s fun), this Oliver Twist is a thrill ride for anyone who still believes TV can be entertaining.
As a side note, I loved Sikes’s White Bull Terrier!! As a major fan of these clownish dogs (and dogs in films in general), it put a huge smile on my face to see one in a somewhat-starring role. The early bull terriers developed in the early 1800’s by crossing brawny bulldogs with tenacious terriers, but it was not until the 1860’s that the breed began to look more homogenous (during their early decades, some looked more like bulldogs and others looked more like terriers) with the work of James Hinks of Birmingham, England. The dog used in Oliver Twist is clearly a White Bull Terrier, and as the novel is set in the 1830’s, a bull terrier of such modern proportions and features would have been an impossibility—an easily forgivable anachronism, given the spunk the dog adds to the film and the softer side of Sikes he reveals. Sikes does have a dog in the novel, named Bulls-eye (which I guess, explains the reason they chose a bull terrier with that distinctive black ring), but he is said to be “A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places.”
It’s a very raw, crusty adaptation, isn’t it? I liked it, but as you say, sometimes it was hard to understand the accents.
That it was! I think with stories that have been so heavily adapted into film, like many of Dickens’s works, the only way to make a statement is to be a little more edgy. It does make for enjoyable stuff!