Oliver Twist (Season 1)

Oliver Twist (2007) is a BBC drama series adapting Charles Dickens, and you can watch online on iFILM. A nine-year-old orphan dares to ask the workhouse master for a second bowl of gruel — one small act of defiance that drags him down through the worst of Victorian London.

After fleeing his bleak apprenticeship, the boy falls in with a gang of child pickpockets run by Fagin, played by Timothy Spall as a charming, calculating old man who turns street kids into thieves. When the kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's brutal associate Bill Sikes (Tom Hardy) sets out to snatch the child back. Sophie Okonedo, Edward Fox and Sarah Lancashire round out the cast, while director Coky Giedroyc keeps the tone poised between fairy tale and social nightmare.

This five-part version compresses a massive novel without losing the cruelty of the slums or Dickens' faith in a stranger's mercy. The reason to watch is an early Tom Hardy, whose Sikes is genuinely frightening, and Spall, whose Fagin is repulsive and pitiable at once. Stream Oliver Twist (2007) online on iFILM.