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Desperate Romantics

Desperate Romantics
  • Posted at 1:31pm
  • 20 July 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 9 comments

I wasn't too far into watching Desperate Romantics, BBC2's jokey melodrama about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Victorian artists (Tuesdays), when a lightbulb came on above my head. It was an actual lightbulb, as I'd switched on a lamp in the living room.

But there was mental illumination, too, when I realised that Desperate Romantics reminded me of the episode in Blackadder the Third featuring the poets in the coffee shop.

I'm sure you remember the one. It starred Robbie Coltrane as a volcanically bad-tempered Dr Johnson, and Shelley, Coleridge and Byron were lounging around, being comically tragic ("Be quiet, sir! Can't you see we're dying?"), before Blackadder observed: "There's nothing intellectual about wandering around Italy in a big shirt, trying to get laid."

Substitute "Regency London" for "Italy" and you've got Desperate Romantics in a nutshell. It features a clutch of handsome young men in florid shirts and waistcoats, looking sexy as they try to find beautiful muses with just the right amount of big red hair.

It feels a bit like an extended boy band video - it certainly looks like one, with lots of jazzy shots of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and their friend Fred Walters striding lustily down streets. If they'd suddenly burst into the chorus of Relight My Fire I wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised.

Desperate Romantics is written by Peter Bowker, who, for me, can do no wrong after the brilliant Occupation, and I can see that it's meant to be a bit of a romp. Which is fine, but I can't help but feel short-changed as the Pre-Raphaelites were an important artistic movement (albeit one that was reviled both at the time and frequently ever since) and I'd quite like to learn something about them.

But that's the problem with historical TV dramas: they are either stodgy lumps of gristle full of terrible historical re-creations and featuring actors declaiming in powdered wigs, or they are roistering farces featuring young men bursting out of their breeches and doing lots of jolly rogering with comely wenches.

And historical biopics, however good they are, can never get over those leaden introductions of famous people, along the lines of, "Hello Mozart, have you met Beethoven?" (I know this is historically highly unlikely, but you see my point.)

In fairness, Desperate Romantics doesn't do too badly here. There's nothing as clunking as, "Ah, you must be John Ruskin, foremost critic and social thinker of the age." Though I think I remember a "Look, it's Charles Dickens", or something similar. (Plenty of dramas are guilty of it, though; I'm reliably informed that Moonshot: the Flight of Apollo 11, showing on Monday ITV1, has a few of these killer lines.)

But what struck me forcefully about Desperate Romantics, and others of its ilk, is that someone, somewhere, is terrified of history seeming "dull", and if it isn't presented to the all-important demographic of Young People as an MTV special, then everyone will switch off in droves.

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times

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Comments

  • Posted on 18 August 2009
  • at 9:36pm
  • by Linda

I have a PhD in Fine Art and find the cliches and inaccuracies unbearable, almost as unbearable as the weird monotone voice of the dead-eyed Lizzie - but the boys are gorgeous so i'll carry on watching

  • Posted on 16 August 2009
  • at 1:11am
  • by Fred Bloggs

I fully appreciate that the writers and producers are not aiming for historical accuracy but there are some limits as to how far you can go.

One thing I will say was that the show prompted me to look up the artists portrayed in the series to read more on their works.

I was dissapointed to see such an awful pun as the one which had Rosetti and Hunt ridiculing Millai's 'Bubbles' made famous by it's usage on decades worth of Pears soap advertisements and packaging, which I recognised as soon as it was shown.

My dissapointment was aimed at the innacuracy of joke in that Millai didn't paint the picture for nearly another 30'odd years, the subject matter being that of his 5 year old grandson!

I'm all for a good joke especially one with such irony involved but such a historical inaccuracy for the sake of a 3 second pun which would escape quite a few viewers does the writers and all those involved in the show a dis-service.

  • Posted on 28 July 2009
  • at 1:41pm
  • by gee59

not being pre loaded with prejudice i thought this was brilliant and probably a lot more realistic than we could imagine i note the comments above generally basque in historical obsesion, tv is pop culture and i for one enjoyed the acting capabilities and the interesting dialogue. i particularly enjoyed Amy Mansons brilliant prtrayal of Lizzie. I am looking forward to the next episode.

  • Posted on 26 July 2009
  • at 9:10am
  • by tarragon

I know scriptwriters have to avoid putting us off with archaic dialogue, but lines like 'Shall I pop out a breast?' tended to undermine any illusion of a 10th century setting. Why not go the whole hog and have Ruskin telling his love-starved wife to 'put it away, bitch'? i know it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, but it was bad, bad bad. Alison Graham was spot on by likening it to a boy band video. The makers of this travesty could have done worse than having another viewing of 'Cranford' to see how it should have been done.

  • Posted on 25 July 2009
  • at 11:36pm
  • by mckirklee

In defence of Ms Graham, I always enjoy her reflections, acid drops or no and the Take That comparison was spot on. I quite like this series so far if only because it has introduced me to a movement of art which I knew less about and it has encouraged me to read more about it and identify the historical inaccuracies against the drama. The caricatured boys are delightful from an entertainment point of view but let's face it, they are going to irritate anyone who knows anything about art.

  • Posted on 24 July 2009
  • at 6:56pm
  • by RickyB

How's this for pedantry; when Lizzie was leafing through Dante's preparatory sketches there was a study for the head of a nun actually by Charles Allston Collins (Wilkie's brother). The shot must have lasted for all of a second and a half. On a more serious historical note, the PRB consisted of seven members originally. Time will tell concerning their inclusion. However, I rather enjoyed it inspite of my silly, puritanical self

  • Posted on 24 July 2009
  • at 2:00am
  • by msmidatlantic

Spot on Anna - only if Ben Elton had written the script at least we'd have had a few genuine laughs! For a real romp, viewers should check out Tony Richardson's Tom Jones - which this certainly was NOT. Instead it was leaden, painfully puerile and patronisingly dumbed-down. All in all a sad waste of license-payers money.

  • Posted on 22 July 2009
  • at 2:28pm
  • by ModelC

And Lizzie Siddal didn't model for Ecce Ancilla Domini (it was Rossetti's sister Christina); and Annie Miller didn't model for The Hireling Sphepherd (it was a farm girl called Emma Watkins); and, and...absolute, utter drivel.

  • Posted on 21 July 2009
  • at 7:06pm
  • by StumpWeasel

Gosh, yet another risible review from Ms Graham - does she eat acid drops before writing her reviews? Or perhaps she takes the title of Critic a little too seriously. Granted we don't have to watch the hours and hours of television most critics are subjected to in their line of work. Come on, accept it for what it is and that even some of us over 40 can enjoy it for the light-hearted romp it is.

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