Oh wait... Disney had nothing to do with this except buying it for their streaming service. I guess anyone now does a better Disney than Disney themselves. And trust me, whoever wrote and produced it grew up on Disney and everything they did in their golden age, not the utter crap they make now. This show has a pure classical Disney plot, with hero and villains, a Disney princess, evil plans, conspiracy, redemption and a happy ending. And it does it very well, all characters are sharp and clear, the acting is flawless, the story is highly entertaining and dynamic, this show is a thrill ride from start to finish. Belle is one of the best "Disney princess" architypes in decades, Jack is one of the best heroic Disney characters in decades, Fagin is one of the best Disney antiheros in decades, all other characters are exactly what they need to be and with that they still manage to be more complex than they seem to be. Truly, I haven't enjoyed a pure Disney product like that for a decade.

And that's exactly the problem with Disney and what their execs are missing - their audience grow up, people who watched classical Disney can no longer enjoy the infantile and childish stupidity of the contemporary Disney. If you want to appeal to your core base that was with you for so long, if you want to continue having them as your audience, you need to make a suitable product for them. The Artful Dodger is a perfect Disney product for a grown up audience and it happened only because the actual Disney were not involved. The show deals with mature stuff and shows it in mature way. Well, as much as possible for such type of a product, but still. And the best thing is that it combines aspects of a fairytale and a romance with high stakes of life, death and an actual danger, showing also the unpleasant and the violent. That's what pure Disney, pure adventure and and pure entertainment for adults should be.

Disney are misjudging the content they need to create and they are disregarding the artistic achievement of their product as something not important. People don't go to watch movies because they bought some toy, they go buying toys because of the movie they just watch and liked. Because it moved them, the emotional impact of a good art is that big that it leads everything else. And if your movie or a TV show is sh!t, then no one will even notice that toy. And Disney took that audience that was with them for a long time, and they crap all over them in multiple ways. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pixar, Marvel! All of these were in great shape, and then Disney happened and it all went to sh!t, even their own core Disney animation. Because people who took over Disney are not suitable to manage an artistic endeavor, they maybe understand numbers, but not art. Hope they start to understand the number now, after all their recent garbage flopped so hard and they are losing millions. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, hope season 2 happens, I would like to see where this is going.