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The Artful Dodger \u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd
<\/b>Disney+<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone hates Oliver Twist \u2013 he\u2019s a wet lettuce.\u201d<\/p>\n
Literary history gets reappraised in this picaresque drama, which reunites the supporting cast from Oliver Twist<\/i> 15 years after Charles Dickens\u2019 noble hero left them behind. It\u2019s the 1850s and in the fictional Australian colony of Port Victory, adolescent pickpocket the Artful Dodger is now naval surgeon Jack Dawkins (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Dashing from a card game, where he loses to the cheating harbourmaster Darius Cracksworth (Tim Minchin), to perform an amputation for a baying audience, Jack is a doctor without orders.<\/p>\n
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Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays Dr Jack Dawkins, aka the Artful Dodger.<\/span><\/p>\n Jack\u2019s considerable debt, which Cracksworth values as being worth a severed hand, coincides with a prison transport delivering his supposedly dead criminal mentor, Norbert Fagin (David Thewlis), a liver-spotted scoundrel who is soon Jack\u2019s assistant and the voice in his ear urging him to return to thieving. Circumstances keep pushing Jack to the cusp of criminality, especially when he and Fagin draw the attention of the colony\u2019s zealous lawman, Captain Lucien Gaines (Damon Herriman).<\/p>\n Created by writer James McNamara and producers David Maher and David Taylor, The Artful Dodge<\/i>r is a period piece with the blithe energy of Guy Ritchie\u2019s Sherlock Holmes movies.<\/p>\n Early 2000s alternative rock \u2013 Jet, Spiderbait \u2013 is blasted, and Port Victory is more of a generic British colony, as in a Pirates of the Caribbean<\/i> movie, than a distinctly Australian one. Miranda Tapsell, who is credited with \u201cextra writing\u201d, plays bushranger Frances \u201cRed\u201d Scrubbs, but the Indigenous population or colonialism\u2019s impact on them aren\u2019t referenced in the four episodes provided to critics.<\/p>\n The scrapes and plots come with blackly comic setbacks and farcical British misrule, but the most telling dynamic is at the hospital, where surgery is as much art as science, and Jack fences with the governor\u2019s daughter, Belle Fox (Maia Mitchell). Obsessed with medical research \u2013 she introduces Jack to the unproven theory of \u201cgerms\u201d \u2013 and determined to break down gender barriers, Belle pushes and provokes Jack, who wants more from the bloody, fledgling medical system but is acutely aware that he\u2019s excluded from the ruling class.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a moment in the third episode, where Jack lightly holds Belle\u2019s hand as she makes her first surgical incision into a corpse. It\u2019s somehow both tender and macabre, and that kind of period friction is where The Artful Dodger<\/i> feels at its most inventive.<\/p>\n The show is never short of pressing tasks for its protagonist and the direction, from Jeffrey Walker and then Corrie Chen, rightly hums along.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing revisionist about this history, but with its arcane medical detail and criminal argot it splits the difference between Barry McKenzie and Barry Lyndon<\/i>.<\/p>\n (From left) Martin Herlihy, Ben Marshall and John Higgins in Please Don\u2019t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Anne Marie Fox\/Peacock via AP<\/cite><\/p>\n Please Don\u2019t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain \u2605\u2605\u2605 A twenty-something comedy trio who\u2019ve taken over the prerecorded sketch spot on Saturday Night Live<\/i> that was once held by Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island cohort, Please Don\u2019t Destroy<\/em> \u2013 Martin Herlihy, John Higgins, and Ben Marshall \u2013 do pop culture absurdity and a witty line in earnest answers to bizarre suggestions. Their geek bro credentials lean hard into self-deprecation: their breakout SNL<\/i> spot was Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift serenading them in a song titled Three Sad Virgins<\/i>.<\/p>\n The Treasure of Foggy Mountain<\/i> is a slight but mostly funny feature-length extension of their brand. Carrying over their first named, they play dorky best friends who vaguely work at the outdoor store owned by Ben\u2019s father, Farley (Conan O\u2019Brien, nailing his every scene) and are stumbling towards adulthood. When circumstances send them on a lost treasure hunt in the mountain, the resulting movie crosses Goonies<\/i> with Forgetting Sarah Marshall<\/i>.<\/p>\n The best SNL<\/i> spin-off movie will forever be Will Forte\u2019s MacGruber<\/i>, but Please Don\u2019t Destroy do enough here to make up for their nepo baby credentials (Herlihy and Higgins have famous comedy dads). Their group dynamic needs to figure out how to better distinguish their personas, but they\u2019re also generous in sharing the screen. The funniest role they\u2019ve written here goes to Meg Stalter (Hacks<\/i>) as a deluded park ranger.<\/p>\n Gary Oldman in Slow Horses<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Apple TV+<\/cite><\/p>\n Slow Horses (season 3) One of the best shows currently streaming doesn\u2019t miss a beat in its third season, with Gary Oldman\u2019s rancorous MI5 outcast and his misfit spy crew getting drawn into an internal power struggle. The scabrous insults and escalating tension of previous seasons are maintained, but this time there\u2019s also a particularly scathing view of how power is wielded by the establishment in the name of national security.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the best advertisement for Jack Lowden taking over as James Bond, but his River Cartwright is such an enjoyably flawed character.<\/p>\n Paper Dolls: satire and trauma.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Tony Mott\/Paramount+<\/cite><\/p>\n Paper Dolls There\u2019s a disclaimer at the start, but nonetheless this is plainly a fictionalised retelling of Bardot, the girl group formed via the 1999 reality television competition Popstars<\/i>; creator Ainslie Clouston is working from an original concept by Bardot member Belinda Chapple.<\/p>\n Based on the first episode, it\u2019s a vaguely period piece where the music industry is usurious and the tone reflexively spins between Spice Girls satire and the overwhelming trauma of Izzy James (Emalia), a former teen star spat out by the industry but given a second chance.<\/p>\n Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose<\/b><\/p>\n Amazon Prime<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cOddity\u201d is not the worst thing you can say about a film, but it sums up this British black comedy both for its historic subject and the lack of better definable elements in its telling. In the 1930s a family on the Isle of Man drew tabloid headlines when they claimed their home was inhabited by a mongoose, Gef, that could talk. Adam Sigal\u2019s satire is focused on Nandor Fodor (Simon Pegg, leaning heavily into the costumes and props), a parapsychologist who was one of the real-life experts who came to debunk the tale.<\/p>\n Khalid Abdalla as Dodi Fayed and Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in the new season of The Crown.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Daniel Escale\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n The Crown <\/b>(season 6) Game of Thrones<\/i>\u2032 reputation is marred by a shoddy and ill-judged final season, but if anything The Crown<\/i>\u2019s conclusion is shaping up to be even more disappointing.<\/p>\n Peter Morgan\u2019s historic drama had already been flailing after making an impressive debut defined by ceremonial insight and tart wit, but the new season bringing back Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) as a conciliatory ghost to smooth over her divide with Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) is just a laughably bad gambit. With the last six episodes dropping on Thursday 14 December, ignominy beckons.<\/p>\n Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. <\/i><\/b>Get The Watchlist<\/i><\/b> delivered every Thursday.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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