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Desperate Romantics

Samuel Barnett as John Millais, Aidan Turner as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rafe Spall as William Holman Hunt and Sam Crane as Fred Walters in Desperate Romantics
  • Posted at 4:05pm
  • 06 August 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 2 comments

I've tried, I've really, really tried to dislike Desperate Romantics (Tuesdays, BBC2, BBC HD). But I've failed miserably and I now fully embrace the fact that it's rambunctious tosh that's easy both on the eye and on the ear.

I'll hold up my hands and admit that my problem with it, right from the start, was that I actually expected to learn something about the Desperate Romantics of the title, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Victorian artists.

Silly me. Desperate Romantics is not a history lesson, it's just a great big noisy adult pantomime full of buttocks, bosoms and bonking. And you can feel free to put that on the DVD cover when the time comes. All that's missing is Jim Davidson.

I quite like Pre-Raphaelite paintings, though I fully acknowledge the movement's tendency towards sententiousness and sentimentality, plus its ludicrous idealisation of tragic or indeed "fallen" women. Ah yes, how the Pre-Raphs loved prostitutes.

Loved them rather too much and rather too often, if Desperate Romantics is to be believed. There's wall-to-wall rumpy-pumpy as William Holman Hunt (Rafe Spall), (fictional) friend Fred Walters (Sam Crane) and the priapic Dante Gabriel Rossetti (a smouldering Aidan Turner, who played a smouldering vampire in BBC3's Being Human, which starts a re-run on BBC1 next Thursday, 13 August) fall for the lusty, busty charms of a succession of welcoming wenches.

Very little is left to the imagination, but it's all done in such a Confessions of a Window Cleaner sort of way that it's difficult to take offence. In fact, it's difficult not to laugh as some of the sex scenes are wildly funny - in a future episode, Rossetti has a string of hilarious no-holds-barred encounters with a terrifyingly vigorous whore who rides him like a jump jockey.

Desperate Romantics is written by Peter Bowker, who penned the recent, brilliant Iraq war drama Occupation, starring James Nesbitt as a disillusioned soldier. So he's obviously a man of many talents. I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve with the Desperates, maybe he just fancied writing a bit of a romp.

Straightforward historical dramas are a fading species as TV types seem terrified of history seeming dull. Which brings us neatly to The Tudors, which returns shortly to BBC2 (see next week's RT).

We've reached series three and Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour. I laughed all the way through the first two episodes, usually at every single scene involving the participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace, Yorkshiremen who rose in revolt against the king's destruction of their monasteries.

As The Tudors is an Irish co-production it's packed with Irish actors, most of whom can't hide their origins. So the scenes involving hordes of supposed stout Yorkshiremen all end up sounding like a rabble in a Dublin bar. A hoot.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times - read her column in the latest issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale now.

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  • Posted on 28 August 2009
  • at 9:17pm
  • by Ophelia

Fantastic, enjoyed every single minute. Music fitted the drama wonderfully. Thanks for a breath of fresh air!

  • Posted on 26 August 2009
  • at 9:04am
  • by Steverino

Middle class, low-brow, anti-intellectual, bodice ripping,PC,over-blown,over-hyped,shameful garbage. Anyone who wastes their time watching such flagrant s**t should be ashamed of themselves.And the patronising prats at the BBC for commissioning it.

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