{"id":24551,"date":"2026-03-10T10:50:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:52:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:52:46","slug":"the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/","title":{"rendered":"James McNamara on The Artful Dodger\u2019s Historical Accuracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

19th-century surgery had been on James McNamara\u2019s mind for a while. He received his PhD in English from Oxford, where he looked into 19th-century medicine, anatomy and literature. Outside of school, he was a fan ofliterature such as Charles Dickens\u2019 Oliver Twist<\/em>\u2014although not so much of the titular character but rather of the Artful Dodger and Norbert Fagin. He eventually combined the two interests, and\u00a0The Artful Dodger<\/em>\u00a0was born.<\/p>\n

In the series, Jack Dawkins, aka the Artful Dodger, establishes himself as a respected doctor in the 1850s penal colony in Australia before his old acquaintance Fagin shows up and drags him back into a life of crime. At the same time, Jack becomes attached to the governor\u2019s daughter, Lady Belle, who aspires to become the first woman surgeon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got the opportunity to come in and do this show, when I was developing the Bible and writing the pilot, I was really inspired by Jack Dawkins\u2019 story,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cHow has he been damaged by Fagan? What would that father\/son relationship look like? And then I was also really keen to explore what it would have felt like to be a brilliant mind as a woman in that period and to be so constrained by a profoundly misogynistic and patriarchal society. Lady Belle is based on my wife Rebecca, who is a really brilliant professor of medieval literature, and I thought, what would happen if Rebecca was told to wear a corset and go to a tea party and not go to campus?\u201d<\/p>\n

And, of course, those themes are tied together through the portrayal of 1850s medical practices. McNamara proclaims himself a research-based writer. \u201cI do enormous amounts of research before each season,\u201d he explains. \u201cBefore season two, I read 1,000 pages of 1850s medical journals. I have\u00a0Gray\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>. I try to steep myself in the mind frame of a doctor of that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly every episode features a unique medical case that Jack (and\/or Lady Belle) must tackle. For each season, \u201cI take a core sample of several different years of medical history, and I read case after case, and then I make a big spreadsheet of all the interesting, different cases, and the writers and I chat about them and find the most eccentric, bizarre, weird, funny, uncanny ones that seem stranger than fiction,\u201d he says. \u201cThen we look for things that have a universal application in terms of humanity, in terms of love and loss and pain. Those are the stories we choose to dramatize.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example of one of those \u201cstranger-than-fiction\u201d medical episodes, he notes that episode six of season two features \u201ca particularly unpleasant case of someone urinating out of their belly button, which is based beat by beat on a true case from the 1850s.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNamara strives to make everything as medically accurate to the time as it can be, and he even takes a somewhat hands-on approach to doing so. He works with a consultant surgeon\u2014Ross Knight, a professor of medicine\u2014to reverse engineer how doctors of the 1850s would have actually performed various medical procedures.<\/p>\n

McNamara notes that the lead actors\u2014Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maia Mitchell, who play Jack and Lady Belle, respectively\u2014are invested in the accuracy of the medical stories as well. Beyond that, they are invested in the authenticity of their characters and the storytelling as a whole.<\/p>\n

Before each shooting block, McNamara sits down with Brodie-Sangster, Mitchell and David Thewlis, who plays Fagin, to break down the scenes. \u201cI do a lot of performance dramaturgy with them,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cI work much more like a playwright in the theater with the actors. We go through the story arcs across the block of filming. And then at the scene level, depending on the scene, we will sometimes go through, beat by beat, each emotional turning point and how the characters are responding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Thomas and Maia, I remember there was one scene in season two where we all felt it wasn\u2019t quite gelling, and we just sat down together. They were sitting on either side of me, and we went through the scene beat by beat, and I re-crafted the scene with them because it\u2019s a collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have so much respect for them,\u201d McNamara adds. \u201cThey are really extraordinary talents. I rely on them in the same way I rely on my heads of department, head of production, design, costume. They are the heads of the department of that character. Some writers might say, Well, it\u2019s\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0character, not yours. I disagree with that entirely. To me, the character is created in the space between me and the actor. It\u2019s a mutual process. It doesn\u2019t exist without both of us. I love the fact that I can have that real mind-meld with the leads to get those characters right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though McNamara aims to be as historically accurate as possible\u2014with departures for the sake of drama\u2014it is important for period dramas not to \u201cfeel stuffy\u201d or like a museum piece. \u201cIt feels contemporary to us today,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s something that Maia does really effectively in her performances. She thinks about herself as a contemporary person within that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The soundtrack of the series aims to do that as well. \u201cIt\u2019s meant to give that signal of, This is not just museum-piece theater,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is a contemporary-feeling show, and I think the combination of being really rooted deeply in historical accuracy while also bringing in a contemporary-feeling soundtrack\u201d achieves that.<\/p>\n

The first episodes of both seasons begin with rock songs that do certainly give it a more contemporary feel right off the bat. Episode one of the first season begins with Wolfmother\u2019s \u201cJoker And The Thief,\u201d and season two starts off with Blur\u2019s \u201cSong 2,\u201d both of which not only set the more action-driven tone of the story but also give it a modern feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things I love about reading older literature is I feel like I\u2019m there with the characters, and to me, that\u2019s what I wanted to do with\u00a0The Artful Dodger<\/em>,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cI wanted us to be able to speak to these characters who are set in the 1850s, but their concerns are the same as ours. They\u2019re in love, they worry about family, they worry about money, they worry about jobs.\u201d The contemporary rock music is one of the elements that helps balance out the historical accuracy to make the series\u2019 characters and storylines feel real.<\/p>\n

Season two is out now on Disney+ and Hulu. McNamara says he has \u201cpushed the drama into deeper, darker, messier, more emotional territory.\u201d Jack becomes Fagin\u2019s servant, Belle is ordered by her family to stay away from surgery and Fanny breaks bad, all leading to big character evolutions and more emotional turmoil than ever. It ultimately ends with quite a few unanswered questions.<\/p>\n

Though there is no word yet on a third-season renewal, there are plenty more stories to be told. \u201cI work in a line of work where having people talking to me in my head is a good thing, not a bad thing, and these characters keep talking to me,\u201d McNamara says. \u201cThey\u2019re got more stories they want to tell, and I know that we\u2019d all love to come back and make another series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James McNamara, creator, showrunner, head writer and executive producer of The Artful Dodger, talks to World Screen about balancing historical accuracy with a contemporary feel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1412,"featured_media":24552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,70],"tags":[12021,11713],"class_list":["post-24551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-features","category-top-stories","tag-james-mcnamara","tag-the-artful-dodger","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nJames McNamara on The Artful Dodger\u2019s Historical Accuracy - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"James McNamara on The Artful Dodger\u2019s Historical Accuracy - TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"James McNamara, creator, showrunner, head writer and executive producer of The Artful Dodger, talks to World Screen about balancing historical accuracy with a contemporary feel.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-03-10T14:50:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-03-16T14:52:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2026\/03\/Disney-TheArtfulDodger-0326.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/\",\"name\":\"James McNamara on The Artful Dodger\u2019s Historical Accuracy - TVDRAMA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-03-10T14:50:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-16T14:52:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-artful-dodgers-james-mcnamara-on-balancing-historical-accuracy-with-contemporary-feeling\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"James McNamara on The Artful Dodger\u2019s Historical Accuracy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\",\"name\":\"TVDRAMA\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\",\"name\":\"Jamie Stalcup\",\"description\":\"Jamie Stalcup is the executive editor of World Screen. 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