Thomas Brodie-Sangster and David Thewlis join Australian series The Artful Dodger

Game of Thrones and Love Actually star Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Harry Potter alum David Thewlis have joined an Australian streaming series.

Production has commenced on The Artful Dodger.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster and David Thewlis have been cast as the leads in Disney’s original Australian streaming series, The Artful Dodger.

The British actors are joining an Australian cast including Maia Mitchell, Miranda Tapsell, Tim Minchin, Damon Herriman and Susie Porter.

Set in 1850s Australia, The Artful Dodger is a continuation and spin-off from one of Charles Dickens’ most beloved tales, Oliver Twist.

The series follows the life of Dodger in the colony of New South Wales, some 15 years from Dickens left off. In this new world, the prince of thieves is now seemingly respectable surgeon, but he still can’t shed his other life, getting entangled in all sorts of heists and schemes in between society parties and “proper” folk.

Brodie-Sangster will play the title role as Dodger. He broke out as a child actor in Love Actually and Nanny McPhee and has gone to be involved in Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones, Godless, The Queen’s Gambit and Pistol.

Thewlis will play Fagin, Dodger’s former boss and kind-of mentor. Thewlis is known for a raft of performances including as Professor Lupin the Harry Potter movies, as well as Wonder Woman, Seven Years in Tibet, The Theory of Everything and I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

David Thewlis is known to a whole generation as Lupin from Harry Potter.

Recently, he was on TV in Fargo, The Sandman and Landscapers opposite Olivia Colman. He will be in the upcoming Avatar 3 and Avatar 4.

The cast also includes Kym Gyngell, Andrea Demetriades, Luke Carroll, Lucy-Rose Leonard, Nicholas Burton, Huw Higginson, Jude Hyland, Finn Treacy and Albert Latailakepa.

The episodes will be directed by Jeffrey Walker, Corrie Chen and Gracie Otto while the series was co-created by David Maher and David Taylor, who will also serve as executive producers.

The series is currently filming in NSW.

The Artful Dodger is among Disney Australia’s originals slate for its streaming platform, Disney+.

Also in production is the drama series The Clearing, based on the story of real-life cult The Family and its leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne, starring Teresa Palmer, Miranda Otto, Guy Pearce and Hazeem Shammas.

There is also a period drama called Last Days of the Space Age, starring Radha Mitchell and Guy Pearce.