Another dip into a TV show I missed at the time – 2009’s Desperate Romantics
“Where does an artist start if he wants to change the world?”
Desperate Romantics popped up on BBC2 in the summer of 2009 but though it had a cast full of the kind of names that would normally tempt me, it wasn’t a show that I actually watched at the time. A hefty six-parter written by Peter Bowker, it was about the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a reform movement of English painters, poets and other cultural types who were determined to reshape and reinvigorate contemporary thinking about art.
Despite being heavily inspired by a factual book of the same name by Franny Moyle, it predictably situates itself in a ‘inspired by real events’ place by starting off with the following disclaimer: “In the mid-19th century, a group of young men challenged the art establishment of the day. The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the real world, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit.”
First up in the inventiveness is the creation of an everyman figure, Fred Walters, who occupies a place on the fringes of the group but is mainly there, initially at least, to provide the narration that explains and introduces the group and the dynamics that exist between them. Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Millais form the essential hub of the group and it is their loves, lives and lashing of paint that forms the crux of the series, in that order and therein lies some of the problem that I had with the show.
The focus is so much on the interpersonal dynamics and the love-lives of the artists – assumedly to avoid the dryness that might have accompanied a more historically fastidious account – that the result is largely of a sprawling mess of a show, overly pointedly keen to invest a modern aesthetic that just ends up feeling false. It is one of the constant problems of fictionalised reality, the postulation that the story– here, of the paintings and the battle with the art establishment – isn’t interesting enough resulting in a very much over-egged pudding.
At least it never takes itself too seriously. Aidan Turner’s lothario Rossetti fizzes with enthusiasm, Rafe Spall’s Holman Hunt has a wonderfully dangerous edge of unpredictability and Tom Hollander’s John Ruskin, the pre-eminent critic who they need to win over, is a fiercely Victorian presence. Samuel Barnet’s Millais is pretty much too good a performance for the show though, a little too subtly drawn as his quieter nature and greater talent don’t fit quite as well into the mad-fer-it nature, and Sam Crane’s Walters is hobbled by the odd position of fictional outsider whose place is never quite clear. The sub-plotting, especially around the women in their lives, suffers from many of the same issues, many of them under-developed due to the over-stuffed canvas.
So in terms of ‘Art’, Desperate Romantics might not be the best place to look. For those after a bit of a romp with a few paintbrushes included, this might be your cup of tea. For me, I think I took it a little bit too seriously from the outset to ever really get into it, but even that aside, I think the tension inherent in the piece – entertainment vs accuracy, art vs love, undermines it a little too much.
