OLIVER TWIST (2007) (import)

It always makes my heart sink when I watch the "behind the scenes" documentaries of TV adaptations of books, and the focus is on how they've changed things, tried to make it "relevant to the modern age" and, by implication, improved upon the original. This is an enjoyable story, but it isn't "Oliver Twist." Now, I'm not a purist. I've just finished acting in a local version of the musical, Oliver! which also strays far from Dickens' original. But this one just isn't quite right. The characters keep the same names, but are not the same people. My particular gripe is with the way the Artful Dodger is portrayed. Dodger is a boy who thinks he's a man, cynical, arrogant and a joy to read about or watch. Yet here, he is yet another sulky, stroppy teenager. Oliver, on the other hand, the writers have decided to make less wimpy than he usually comes across. No harm in that - yet is there no other way than to have him answering back the whole time? The story itself is fine, for there at least the writers have kept close to the original. But at times the characters are barely recognisable.

I'm a bit late with these comments because I've only just seen this version of "Oliver Twist" on TV. I will not be buying the DVD even though Amazon have already reduced the price by 75%, which seems to reflect a need to clear the stock.

I found the changes from the original story to be somewhat problematic.

Fagin and the boys keep calling Oliver "Nolly". This is grating. Dickens used that nickname only three or four times in the novel.

Rose sings "Abide with me". The novel was finally published in 1839. The music for the poem, making it a hymn, wasn't published until 1861.

The dialogue is an uncomfortable mix of mid-19th century street talk and early 21st century slang.

Nancy is described by Dickens as "stout and hearty", not as of mixed race and skinny.

Timothy Spall, as others have commented, turns Fagin into a less-than-believable caricature but he does use the right accent and turns of phrase to suit his character. His costume is extraordinary, but perhaps it would be deemed anti-Semitic to portray him in the same way as he is drawn by Cruikshank in the original novel.

Edward Fox was, for me, the greatest disappointment in a rather two-dimensional portrayal of Mr Brownlow.

William Miller, a photogenic boy with a face to tug the heart-strings, had been coached to play a more resilient Oliver but he seemed to finish up without much feeling at all.

The background music is jarring and distracting.

Some of the sets seem to have been borrowed from an earlier film version of the story.

On the other hand, I have no disrespect for people who enjoyed it. The photography and lighting are very good. The essence of the story is still there. It's good entertainment. So I'm not arguing -- just pointing out that it's less than perfect.

As a piece of entertainment, this is in fact not at all bad; it is pacy, well-filmed and generally well-acted. There is much to enjoy. If, however, you have ever read the book or, indeed, if you have ever seen the David Lean film version, you will come away feeling decidedly short-changed and even a little bit angry, especially after watching the accompanying documentary, in which the adapter and the director seem to suggest that they can improve on Dickens; for Heaven's sake, why does it have to be relevant to today? Surely Dickens's appeal is that it is, well, Dickensian? The liberties taken with the plot are grievous enough (even though the rewriting of the Monks sub-story is effective enough in a soap opera kind of way), but it is the way in which Dickens's wonderful grotesques and eccentrics have been presented which niggles the most; even brilliant character actors like Timothy Spall and Gregor Fisher are prevented from bringing their parts to glorious life by an adapter and director who think that they know better than Dickens and the actors have, of course, their moments, they compare unfavourably to portrayers of the roles in previous versions. Mr Spall is even physically wrong for Fagin (too young, too corpulent); he would have made a fine Beadle; I suspect that the director considered this to be casting "outside of the box", but it does not quite come off. On the plus side, the young actor playing Oliver is for once not the simpering wimp of so many versions and Edward Fox offers a much more multi-layered Mr Brownlow than we have come to expect. The most striking performances, however, come from Tom Hardy as a psychotic Bill Sykes and Sophie Okenedo as a black Nancy; played by younger actors than usual, this really works and one can sense that there is a strange but very real kind of love at the heart of this abusive relationship. Mr Hardy is brilliant throughout; a pity, therefore, that his death scene is so badly botched and unnecessarily rewritten. As I say, this isn't bad, but if you want just one "Oliver Twist" for your collection, then I would go for the David Lean film instead.