![]() She compared some of the exploitation of children today to the manipulation of the orphans by Fagin, with “children being used … obviously it happens today with things like county lines this is like the 1830s version of that.”Ĭomedians and writers Thomas and Montgomery also appear in the show, along with stars who play real-life historical characters to help teach some history to audiences, including David Threlfall as the first Metropolitan chief of police, Sir Charles Rowan, and Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds as Queen Victoria, along with newcomers such as Billy Jenkins as Dodger. Montgomery said that with no welfare state for Victorian children the “food bank was the local market and what could you nick”. It’s a survival instinct he’s not a greedy man who wants money in the way you’ve seen in the past.” As Fagin says, ‘If we don’t rob we can’t eat and if we can’t eat we’ll starve and we’ll die’. “The whole thing is survival, there’s no one to rely on. He first came up with the concept after appearing in a school performance of Oliver Twist as a child and said “coming from a working-class background I’m not saying we struggled for food every week but we didn’t have a lot of money”.Īlthough the fast-paced Dodger does not condone the crimes the characters commit it does explain why they do them, as Thomas said. You’ve got the Malory Towers kids going off to a fancy school and that’s one life and that’s fine, but this is a different world where I think kids watching this today, it resonates with them.” He said: “We wanted to make something that’s really inclusive that everyone watching can identify with. ![]() Thomas said he could see the children in his area who were being hit by the cost of living crisis. They also wanted Dodger to be a programme the “family can all sit down and watch” for their children’s generation, while highlighting, with the use of food banks escalating due to the pandemic, that many children who will watch the BBC show will understand Fagin’s orphan gang’s battle against poverty and hunger. Montgomery said that Nancy, who is played by Saira Choudhry, is no longer the traditional big-hearted fallen “Cockney sparrow”, but for the first time on screen as a wily northern thief who manipulates Bill Sikes.Īs Tom Stoppard did with his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, creating a new show around the back-stories of characters from a classical work gives, as Montgomery put it, “an opportunity to create something fresh and new”. The husband and wife team have also updated other characters for modern audiences. The spin-off creates a backstory for Fagin, played by Christopher Eccleston, making him “more interesting, sympathetic and funny … like a Robin Hood character” than in previous screen versions and suggests he may have been the subject of an antisemitic attack, according to Dodger creators Rhys Thomas and Lucy Montgomery.
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