Oliver Twist on DVD (2007)

A customer from Thame , 19/02/2008

I saw the first episode on TV and that was enough. The writer must have thought the story needed to be 'Brought up to date'. It's MEANT to be about Victorian England. Did they really think they could write better than Charles Dickens?

  5 out of 7 people found this review helpful

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WooferMaiden from Bristol , 19/04/2008

This adaptaion of Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist is very well done. I haven't read the book as yet, but intend to do so. I think that the characters are very colourful and really put forward what the era must have been like. However I have a BIG problem with the BBC in the way that they have put this DVD together. As you might know it was shown on the BBC over a few weeks so instead of editing out the credits and leaving it as one film they have put it on the DVD in the separate episodes!! So every 40 mins you get the end credits and then it starts again!! It wouldn't have taken them very long to edit it out so why oh why did they leave them in. I watched it last night and spent most of my time fastforwarding!!!!

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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A customer from England , 21/03/2008

If your bored with period dramas this might sway you. A modern interpretation instead of just a remake. Some of the standard plot items have been changed but you'll be pleasantly surprised. Alot of famous British actors star in it.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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A customer from Arundel , 28/12/2007

Although I had to watch the film in parts on TV the most lasting impression was of the filth and squalor of the poor of London which Dickens tried so hard to capture in his books. This compared the luxury of Olivers real home and the self importance of Mr Bumble and the magistrates with the life of the orphans with Fagin. It was good to see that the boys looked poor and under fed, spotty and dirty. Fagin was well portrayed though Bill Sykes I thought sometimes lacked the real scare factor. Nancy's portrayal was interesting.

In all an excellent production.

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A customer from England , 21/03/2008

If your bored with period dramas this might sway you. A modern interpretation instead of just a remake. Some of the standard plot items have been changed but you'll be pleasantly surprised. Alot of famous British actors star in it.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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kent from London , 19/05/2008

I don't understand how the BBC can have done so well with Bleak house and then produced this very poor relation to the marvellous Oliver Twist. The mastery of the Dickens plot was butchered to produce this hybrid story that left me, having only recently read the original story, feeling robbed by one not even close to the artful Jack Dawkins.

Much of the second book of the story is missing along with many characters and the story's charm. What particularly saddned me was the loss of the original, dramatic final chase of Bill Sikes and the recovery of Oliver. Was this for budgetary or health and safety reasons? Whatever the reason, it is weaker for it. The best word I can find to describe the ending, and indeed much of this incarnation of a classic story, is 'limp'!

It's four days since i saw it and still i am disappointed...

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