Desperate Romantics
Nov. 17th, 2011 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessDesperate Romantics
I recently caught up with this six episode show, which engagingly starts off its retelling of the life of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by informing us that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood took a nicely "creative" approach to life and therefore this miniseries will be following the same spirit. In other words, those looking for an even remotely accurate portrayal of the lives of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais should certainly head elsewhere. Those looking for bouncing naked breasts, you have found the right show. Yay!
Which is not to say that the show isn't highly entertaining. It is. If you missed it, it's more or less about the three founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a fourth character, Fred, made up for the show (the producers cheerfully explain that they felt viewers needed a sort of stand in, thus, Fred, which makes me think very sad things about how the producers view their viewers) as they have sex, paint, think about sex, paint, have more sex, paint, have dramatic moments mostly about having sex, not having sex, or thinking about having sex, and then paint or draw again, with a couple of rivalries here and there. You might be sensing a theme here. Naturally this means that once John Everett Millais gets married and sinks into rather less scandalous sex (although the show correctly notes that his marriage was a scandal at the time) his role rather dims, to be somewhat overtaken by a surprisingly socially inept William Morris (really?) and a few other people. Sometimes the camera looks at paintings. Sometimes it makes fun of goats.
The most vibrant character is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I assume because he's probably the best known of the group and gets to have the most sex. It helps that he's very easy on the eyes. More interesting are William Holman Hunt, who in this version veers wildly between sexing up bouncing prostitutes against pianos and taking long trips to the Holy Land (oddly, given the show's obsession with romantic scandal and hookups, his fate of marrying his late wife's sister is left out), and John Ruskin. The show wants to play with the possibility that the influential art critic may have been a pedophile (evidence and documentation for this is questionable, and the show does not help by playing havoc with the historical timeline), but, as a little DVD extra confirms, actor Tom Hollander was understandably unhappy with the thought of playing a pedophile and strongly suggested that the show turn Ruskin into an asexual instead. Which makes sense enough, but given the focus of this show means that Ruskin is forced to spend a lot of time looking at sexy drawings and later face accusations that he may just be a pedophile while everyone else, even the sad sad Fred, gets to remove clothing and do a lot of bouncing on beds. And pianos. Poor Ruskin.
As I said, highly entertaining, and if you don't know much about the Pre-Raphaelites (like, say, the small bit that Rossetti did have three siblings who played important roles in his life) or are willing to forget what you do know it works quite well, and full credit to the show for doing a pretty decent job of making the actors look like their historical counterparts, a good trick especially given that Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris are two of the most famous faces of the Victorian period. I even liked the completely non period music (brace yourself, musical purists.) I mean, if you're going to be historically inaccurate, you might as well have fun with it – and slip in the occasional historical fact here and there. Which this show does.
I recently caught up with this six episode show, which engagingly starts off its retelling of the life of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by informing us that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood took a nicely "creative" approach to life and therefore this miniseries will be following the same spirit. In other words, those looking for an even remotely accurate portrayal of the lives of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais should certainly head elsewhere. Those looking for bouncing naked breasts, you have found the right show. Yay!
Which is not to say that the show isn't highly entertaining. It is. If you missed it, it's more or less about the three founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a fourth character, Fred, made up for the show (the producers cheerfully explain that they felt viewers needed a sort of stand in, thus, Fred, which makes me think very sad things about how the producers view their viewers) as they have sex, paint, think about sex, paint, have more sex, paint, have dramatic moments mostly about having sex, not having sex, or thinking about having sex, and then paint or draw again, with a couple of rivalries here and there. You might be sensing a theme here. Naturally this means that once John Everett Millais gets married and sinks into rather less scandalous sex (although the show correctly notes that his marriage was a scandal at the time) his role rather dims, to be somewhat overtaken by a surprisingly socially inept William Morris (really?) and a few other people. Sometimes the camera looks at paintings. Sometimes it makes fun of goats.
The most vibrant character is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I assume because he's probably the best known of the group and gets to have the most sex. It helps that he's very easy on the eyes. More interesting are William Holman Hunt, who in this version veers wildly between sexing up bouncing prostitutes against pianos and taking long trips to the Holy Land (oddly, given the show's obsession with romantic scandal and hookups, his fate of marrying his late wife's sister is left out), and John Ruskin. The show wants to play with the possibility that the influential art critic may have been a pedophile (evidence and documentation for this is questionable, and the show does not help by playing havoc with the historical timeline), but, as a little DVD extra confirms, actor Tom Hollander was understandably unhappy with the thought of playing a pedophile and strongly suggested that the show turn Ruskin into an asexual instead. Which makes sense enough, but given the focus of this show means that Ruskin is forced to spend a lot of time looking at sexy drawings and later face accusations that he may just be a pedophile while everyone else, even the sad sad Fred, gets to remove clothing and do a lot of bouncing on beds. And pianos. Poor Ruskin.
As I said, highly entertaining, and if you don't know much about the Pre-Raphaelites (like, say, the small bit that Rossetti did have three siblings who played important roles in his life) or are willing to forget what you do know it works quite well, and full credit to the show for doing a pretty decent job of making the actors look like their historical counterparts, a good trick especially given that Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris are two of the most famous faces of the Victorian period. I even liked the completely non period music (brace yourself, musical purists.) I mean, if you're going to be historically inaccurate, you might as well have fun with it – and slip in the occasional historical fact here and there. Which this show does.