Tag Archives: Tim Minchin

The Artful Dodger: The Yankee Dodge – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is a bloody introduction to a beloved character that promises a lot, but I am not yet wholly convinced.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

The Artful Dodger Review –

For people of my time, this odd little TV show ran for one season but still echoed through time. Punching above its weight. Escape of the Artful Dodger had such an odd impact that I was surprised no one had taken a second bite at the apple until today. Let us then go back to 1800s Australia, stuck on the opposite side of the world from all, but at the heart of our story.

So to set the scene, it is a typical day in colonial Port Victory in what will become Australia. Hangings are common, life is cheap, and power is everywhere. Dr Jack Dawkins (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is one of the few local doctors around; even rarer, he is competent at his job. However, he does like to gamble with people like Darius Craksworth (Tim Minchin), who is not afraid to cheat. Being in the hole for £26 and about to lose a hand is almost the worst thing to happen to him, but then a Norbert Fagin (David Thewlis) arrives. He should be dead, but here he stands, and he also knows that Dr Jack Dawkins used to be The Artful Dodger and is still technically an escaped convict. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Movie Review – Robin Hood (2018)

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TL;DR – Of this films many, many failings, is the fact that you can see a kernel of a good idea here, that they refused to commit too and thus made it a film about nothing.    

Score – 1 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Robin Hood. Image Credit: Lionsgate

Review –

Oh wow, and I mean wow, how do you stuff this up as badly as you do here. For a lot of people, there is this annoyance that film companies keep going back to these public domain properties because it is just a cheap option, and I get that. But because these stories are so well known, you can use them as a basis for doing something novel or even experimental. In years past, we have gotten the full-on epic with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves all the way to the absolute farce that is Robin Hood: Men in Tights. However, there was room for another film to take the mythos in a new direction … well, this is not that film, which somehow fails at being both a re-telling of the original myth and also an abysmal attempt at modernising the story for a new audience.

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