The Dickensian

   I finally did  get to see the Dickensian a while back; in fact I own it! But while it's a bit sad it only lasted one season (and they they didn't even let as Americans see it), it could have been a lot better than it was.

   This is perhaps the ultimate Dickens crossover, alternate universe fiction. The assumption here is, as with some of my own fiction, that all of Dickens characters inhabit the same reality, and those characters from separate novels can even interact. This has been hinted at before, as with a "Mr. Brownlow" in the most recent version of Bleak House", and Mr. Micawber and Uriah heap showing up in "The Escape of the Artful Dodger."

    I'm grateful they didn't include characters from authors other than Dickens, so we can assume it's a "Dickensverse." I might assume that Dickens himself does NOT exist here, as there is no cameo by him, as happens in some other pastiches.

   There are a number of clever and amusing storylines which intersect with each other. A major one is that of Inspector Bucket (he's the gent in the center of the pic above) of Bleak House, solving the suspected murder of Jacob Marley. It's a bit of a cliche (though it works well here), that a murder victim was a jerk whom nobody cared for, and may have brought it on himself. But it's still murder, and Bucket has a job to do. His partner Scrooge, Fagin, whose had some dealings with him, and Crachits are all suspects. The inspector at last arrives at a conclusion where he is faced with the dilemma of responding to the demands of his profession, and "bending" the rules slightly in order to take a course of action that seems the most ethical.

    The other major thread is that of Compeyson, the scroundrel who abandoned Miss Havishham in Great Expectations, and goes into detail with his collaboration with Arthur Havishham. Compeyson is still evil here, but he also appears to have some real feelings for Miss Havisham, and it's her relatives who seem even more at fault than he is for what we know eventually happens. Arthur is the trully evil one.This makes the main villain at bit sympathetic; at one point they have him threatened and by Bill Sikes! This works as drama, though I rather doubt that's the way Dickens would have it, as he rendered Compeyson as unrepentedly evil, as I remember it.

    Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are also present, and married before Oliver Twist himself arrives on the scene, late in the series. This is bit of intentional cheating, as it wasn't that way in the book. It doesn't get really bad, however, until right near the end when they knew for sure the show would be cancelled: Oliver asks for more in front of the Bumbles, during a meeting with Grandgrind, Bounderby, and some other characters making cameos from Hard Times. It makes since that the like of Gradgrind and Bumble would be acquainted, but Oliver's shining moment didn't happen like that. Sure, plenty of Twist adaptations deviate too, but not so much as this, and the trick with this sort of mash-up is to have the characters interact without deviating from their canonical storylines. The final scene in which Oliver meets Dodger outside Scrooge's house, presumably when Marley's Ghost shows up, then leads him into the Three Cripples, also deviates so far from the book it's not even funny. The actor playing Dodger looks nothing like him, as he's played by an African or Indian boy. The actor playing Oliver is well chosen, save that he's a little too young; I fist thought this was taking place some years earlier than when Oliver is sent away, but the ending makes clear that's not at the case.

   Or maybe they were just getting sloppy at the end, as I rather suspect. All of the adult actors look their part, and do their jobs well. But what there is of Oliver has been totally butchered.

    And that's about it for the Dickensian, both good and bad.

Richard Charles in The Secret Garden

   This is the only picture from a musical stage version of Frances Burnett's The Secret Garden. I still have a couple versions of that I saw years ago. This one was performed at Salisbury Theatre in 1983, one year after Oliver Twist 1982. Colin Craven looks very like Oliver Twist in that movie--as much so as the dauphin in Clive Donner's The Scarlet Pimpernel!
    Charles was on stage for more than he was ever on screen. Colin Craven, the young invalid heir to Mistlethwaite Manor, was one role he would fit nearly as well as that of Oliver Twist and Louis-Charles Capet. I've seen many versions of The Secret Garden over the years with the roles played by other actors. The Charles version was, of course, stage only and was never filmed.

The "lost scene" of 1982's Oliver Twist

   

    The "Reading Program" version DOES explain the deleted scene where Oliver is seen ducking under a fence. It occurs after Oliver flees Sowerberry's coffin shop, and before his meeting with Dodger. Oliver finds an old ramsackle inn, where a man is putting out the garbage. He is so starved that he squeezes through the fence in hopes of snatching some discarded food from the Inn. A mangy, starving dog bars his teeth at Oliver, and Oliver scrambles back through the fence. The scene was filmed, because there's the picture. A small incident, but it's shame it was cut, as it shows how wretched Oliver's prediciment was, undoubtedly why Goldman put it in, and believe me, his script does not shy away from such things, no more than Dickens.

Oliver Twist 1982 CBS Reading Program

   Last November I found this in a newspaper archive. I knew that back in the early 80s CBS had a "read more about it" program, and they sponsored film adaptations of classic like Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" Kipling's "Kim" among others including George Scott's Christmas Carol. For "Oliver Twist" at least, they went a step further and offered a special reading program sponsared by Red Lobster, and available to teachers only. This small booklets were availabel for a limited time, and contain ALL of James Goldman's final script for Oliver. Even though I'd still want to get a hold of one Goldman's originals, I finally got to actually read. It turns out that Goldman is a very beautiful writer, meaning that he also doesn't not shy away from some of the emotionally heartrending, and really grimy, gritty parts of the story! 





 
 

Oliver Twist Party

    It's almost the anniversary for 1982's Oliver Twist. Back then, this article was published in Screen International ,a British publication, at the time the movie was released on American television. The producers and actors threw this party in honor of the film's release. Richard Charles, the boy who brought the definitive version of Oliver to life, is caught in a rare moment off-screen. He apparently attended the party in-character, wearing the aristocratic get-up he wore in the film after Oliver's rescue, when he accepted a charity award for his performance, from Ward Thomas, chairman of Trident Television. I'd never heard of him, though I know of Norton Romsey, Twist's co-producer, but I didn't know he had a title until now. Cherie Lunghi who played Nancy, and Eileen Atkins (Mrs. Bumble), and Oliver Cotton (Monks/Edward Leeford) are also in attendance. An actress who was uncredited (I do remember her scene) also came in character as a Victorian street flower girl. Ted Child's the film's other co-producer is there. Absent, at least in the photos, are the others, including Tim Curry, and George C. Scott, who had top billing as Fagin. I'm guessing Scott was in America at the time. The same might have been true with Curry. Even though he's British, Curry spent a lot of time in America, as I recall, and was working on (or maybe had finished) playing another villain in a screen version of Annie at the time. "Timothy Corrie" is someone entirely different.
     
      One other thing: I wonder why the heck Clive Donner isn't here. He directed, he's British, so he'd surely be in attendance.