Our twist on DICKENS

Stars Billy Jenkins and Christopher Eccleston on the early adventures of Jack ‘The Artful Dodger’ Dawkins

- ELAINE REILLY

DODGER

NEW SUN / CBBC / 5.30PM / EP 1 of 10 / DRAMA

How did literature’s most famous pickpocket, Jack ‘The Artful Dodger’ Dawkins, end up on the streets of London?

That’s the fun premise of CBBC’s new family period drama, Dodger, which imagines a backstory for the larger-than-life petty criminal and the rest of Fagin’s band of thieves before the events of Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist.

Set in Victorian England in the late 1830s, each episode of the 10-parter features a standalone adventure, with shocks and surprises tying everything together in the series finale.

The star-strewn cast sees Billy Jenkins (The Crown) take on the role of 12-year-old orphan Dodger, while Christopher Eccleston (The A Word) plays Fagin, and David Threlfall (Shameless) is police chief Sir Charles Rowan, who is hot on the gang’s heels. Meanwhile, guest stars include Danny John-Jules, Alex Kingston and John Thomson.

Here, in an exclusive interview, our cover stars Christopher, 57, and Billy, 14, tell TV Times why the series will leave us wanting more…

This twist on Oliver Twist sounds incredibly inventive!

CHRISTOPHER Yes, this is about the beginning of Dodger’s life with Fagin and the gang. It predates the events in Charles Dickens’ story, and we never meet Oliver.

Creators Rhys Thomas and Lucy Montgomery have taken the characters from the book and gone off on a huge imaginative leap to come up with new stories for them.