Oliver Twist is a 1999 drama serial produced by ITV based on the 1838 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Plot Edwin Leeford, who has a country estate, falls in love with his neighbour Agnes Fleming, who lives with her widowed former sea-captain father and her young sister, Rose. After Agnes becomes pregnant by Edwin, she discovers he is married, with a long-estranged wife and a teenaged son. Edwin is called to Rome by a dying uncle who plans to leave him a fortune as compensation for having arranged Edwin's unhappy marriage. However, his wife Elizabeth learns of this plan, follows him there, and murders him (after the uncle dies and Edwin inherits his wealth). She tries to convince their son Edward to murder Agnes, but his inability to do so triggers a seizure and Agnes runs away, convinced Edwin abandoned her despite his promise to return: Rose witnesses the attack and escape and is traumatized. Agnes seems to contemplate suicide but trudges on to a town, where she collapses, is taken to the local workhouse, and dies in childbirth. Her baby is christened Oliver Twist and taken to a farm for foundlings. At nine, Oliver is moved from the farm back to the workhouse, where he is starved, beaten, and forced to work long hours alongside other children. Other boys compel him at mealtime to ask for more food, and the workhouse board decides he has to be sent away. He is apprenticed to Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker, who is partly sympathetic to him, though his wife and their servants abuse Oliver, and Sowerberry's other apprentice, Noah, insinuates that Oliver's mother was a criminal, inciting Oliver to violence. Oliver escapes from the house and runs away to London, where he is taken by a young pickpocket, the Artful Dodger, to a dwelling occupied by young aspiring thieves under the tutelage of Fagin, a former magician from Prague reduced to a life of crime. By this point, Edward Leeford, Oliver's half brother, lives in London with his mother, who is determined to disinherit Oliver. Using the pseudonym Monks, Edward associates with Fagin and contracts him to make Oliver a criminal and experience public disgrace, as a provision in their father's will left most of his estate to Agnes's child, but disinherited him if the child was a boy who showed any signs of bad character. Oliver accompanies the Dodger and