THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

OLIVER TWIST

Title: Oliver Twist
Production type: TV Mini-Series (produced and transmitted by the BBC)
Year of first transmission: 1962, the first episode was transmitted Sunday 7 January at 5pm
Director: Eric Taylor
Screenplay: Constance Cox
Country of Production: Britain
Genre: Historical drama, mystery, crime
Length: 13 episodes, each around 25 minutes in length
Language: English
Availability: The series was released on DVD in 2017 by Simply Media. (See screenshots below for picture quality.) The miniseries can also be viewed on Youtube (episode 1 can be viewed here).
Boy actors: Bruce Prochnik plays a suitably elfin Oliver. There are a few boys in episode 1 of the series who are Oliver's companions in the workhouse. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are both played by adult actors. In 1961, a year before the transmission of the miniseries, Prochnik had played the title role in the stage musical Oliver! at the West End (he was a boy soprano as well as an actor), and would go on to play the title role in the stage musical on Broadway.

Synopsis
Based on Dickens' famous novel. A parish orphan by the name of Oliver Twist runs away to London and falls in with a gang of thieves and pickpockets led by Fagin. A shadowy figure who goes by the name of Monks wants Fagin to turn Oliver into one of his thieves, but Oliver gets away from the gang and has to be recaptured. Meanwhile, Monks goes to considerable lengths to keep Oliver's true identity a perpetual secret.

This production allegedly provoked questions in Parliament due to its grim realism, for example, the brutal and shocking murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes in episode 11. Was all this, it was wondered, a suitable matter for transmission at teatime? That these questions were raised, however, itself bears testament to the fact that this series didn't sugar-coat the narrative in the way that other, later, productions have sometimes been guilty of doing. It should also be said that all the actors in this production are quite magnificent.

Below: article in the 4 January 1962 edition of the Radio Times, p. 13

Further detail, same edition of magazine, p. 15

Listing for episode 1, same edition of magazine, p. 17

2 weeks later, there was another short article for episode 3 (from Radio Times, 18 January 1962, p. 10):

Below, listing for episode 3 in same edition (all Radio Times magazines from Editor's collection)

Below: Contemporary publicity photos of Bruce Prochnik as Oliver Twist

With Henry McCarthy as Master of the Workhouse:

With Max Adrian as Fagin:

Below: Bruce Prochnik, as himself

Screenshots
Episode 1

Episode 2

Willoughby Goddard does make a rather magnificent Mr. Bumble, the Parish Beadle.