Oliver Twist

Writer James Goldman has in the past come up with imaginative slants on familiar figures (Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood) but nothing very original seems to have occurred to him as regards Fagin, Bill Sikes and the rest. If the picture has an auteur it's the corporate one of Trident Television, and the enterprise registers as perfunctory, flavourless and underproduced, in the way of conventional TV adaptations. Unfair to all concerned, especially the audience, to allow such feeble stuff on to the big screen.