Desperate Romantics

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Rating 4


Written by Peter Bowker, based on the book ‘Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites’ by Franny Moyles

Directed by Paul Gay (episodes 1, 2 and 3), Diarmuid Lawrence (episodes 4, 5 and 6)

Starring Aidan Turner (Dante Gabriel Rossetti), Rafe Spall (William Holman Hunt), Samuel Barnett (John Everett Millais), Sam Crane (Fred Walters), Amy Manson (Elizabeth Siddal), Jennie Jacques (Annie Miller), Tom Hollander (John Ruskin), Zoë Tapper (Effie Ruskin / Effie Gray Millais), Dyfrig Morris (William Morris), Peter Sandys-Clarke (Edward Burne-Jones), Natalie Thomas (Jane Burden), Rebecca Davies (Fanny Cornforth), Poppy le Friar (Rose la Touche), Mark Heap (Charles Dickens), Ian Puleston-Davies (Mr Siddal), Polly Kemp (Mrs Siddal), Josie Farmiloe (Charlotte Siddal), Philip Davis (Frank Stone)


‘Desperate Romantics’ is a bawdy and exuberant six-part BBC television drama that tells the story of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the art movement founded in London in 1848. Keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek much of the time, it plays rather like ‘Carry On Pre-Raphaelites’.

Concentrating on the movement’s three founders, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, it is told through the eyes of a wholly fictional character, Fred Walters. All other main characters are based on real people (with the possible exception of Charlotte Siddal, who I do not know about and who, in any case, plays a small role here).

The series, written by Peter Bowker, whose previous work includes a brilliant updating of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’, plays fast and loose with the truth, but almost everything represented here is based on fact, even if the timelines are distorted for dramatic effect. One small example of this is the reference made to ‘A Child’s World’ (aka ‘Bubbles’), the painting by John Everett Millais that was first exhibited in 1886 and created some controversy during the artist’s lifetime because of its use in a long-running advertising campaign for Pear’s transparent soap. Despite the appearance of an early draft of this work in ‘Desperate Romantics’, the series actually ends some seventeen years earlier in 1869 when Dante Gabriel Rossetti had the body of his wife and muse Lizzie Siddal exhumed so that he could retrieve a small journal of poems he had placed in the coffin.

The six one hour episodes are tremendous fun and pass by quickly – the melancholy concluding episode ends on just the right note of irreverence. The cast is as near to perfect as it is possible to get and there are some fabulous performances. There has been some talk of a second season, which would certainly be possible by drawing on the lives of other later members and associates of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The possibility is enticing and the ending of the final episode does seem to suggest an open door for the future, but it would have a lot to live up to and I would not wish the energy and high spirits of these first six episodes to be dampened.

‘Desperate Romantics’ inspired me to revisit the work of Rossetti, Hunt and Millais and that is probably the biggest compliment I can give it.

Review posted 29 August 2009



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Strange

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Created and written by Andrew Marshall

Starring Richard Coyle, Samantha Janus, Ian Richardson, Andrew Lee-Potts, Timmy Lang and Samuel Barnett



“I’ve always believed that prayer is the last resort of the desperate, Mr Strange.”
Canon Aldophus Black


Following the cancellation of the original ‘Doctor Who’ in 1989 the BBC more or less turned its back on sci-fi and fantasy-TV altogether –- not counting the immensely silly and very funny ‘Red Dwarf’, which ran for eleven years and 52 episodes up to April 1999.

The success of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which came to terrestrial television in Britain via BBC2 in December 1998, encouraged the corporation to commission a new fantasy series, ‘Strange’.

The pilot episode was broadcast in March 2002 and a full season of six episodes began in May 2003. All seven episodes were written by Andrew Marshall, previously most noted for the BBC sit-com ‘2point4 Children’ and for being the inspiration for the character Marvin the Paranoid Android in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

The pilot episode attracted an audience of just fewer than six million and received generally good reviews. The series that followed, however, was almost immediately attacked by on-line genre fans and the criticism grew and became increasingly hostile with each episode. Viewing figures averaged three million and the BBC quickly announced that further episodes would not be commissioned. In a retrospective review of the show in 2003, Mark Harvey of Television Heaven wrote:

“Those who wanted to watch were watching, and those who didn’t… annoyingly were still watching and making sure everyone else knew they did not want to. The BBC’s official message board had become the popular place to bash Strange, meaning that most of the fans gravitated into the Yahoo groups, where Strange was appreciated for what it was, and not constantly compared with Buffy.”

The series centred on John Strange (played by Richard Coyle), a disgraced and defrocked Church of England priest fighting a lonely battle against demons. He is aided by a computer geek called Toby; and Kevin, who suffers from Down’s syndrome and works as a gardener for the Canon Aldophus Black. The sinister Canon Black (played with relish by Ian Richardson), a kind of Grim Reaper figure, is intent on keeping the existence of a demon world secret (as he puts it, hidden under his “by now bulging carpet”) and does so by undermining the work of Strange and maintaining a constant blanket denial of all things weird.

The main cast of characters is completed by Jude Atkins (played by Samantha Janus, who gives an engaging and strangely calming performance), a nurse who begins to have prophetic dreams and is sucked into the dark world of John Strange.

I loved the show when it was first broadcast (the only time it has been screened by the BBC). It’s an almost perfect fit for the kind of thing I like. It is currently being repeated on the Sci-Fi Channel. I have been watching it again and it’s actually even better than I remembered -- a great and inexplicably undervalued show.



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