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Desperate Romantics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
British television drama series

Desperate Romantics
Publicity still portraying (left to right) Samuel Barnett asJohn Everett Millais, Sam Crane as Fred Walters, Aidan Turner asDante Gabriel Rossetti, Rafe Spall asWilliam Holman Hunt.
GenreCostume drama
Written byPeter Bowker
Directed by
Starring
ComposerDaniel Pemberton
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes6
Production
Executive producerHilary Salmon
ProducerBen Evans
Running time60 minutes
Original release
Network
Release21 July (2009-07-21) –
25 August 2009 (2009-08-25)

Desperate Romantics is a six-part television drama serial about thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, first broadcast onBBC Two between 21 July and 25 August 2009.[1]

The series somewhat fictionalised the lives and events depicted. Though heavily trailed, the series received mixed reviews and dwindling audiences.

Overview

[edit]

The series was inspired by and takes its title fromFranny Moyle's factual book about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites.[2]

Moyle, a formercommissioning editor for the arts at the BBC,[3] approached writerPeter Bowker with the book, believing it could form the basis of an interesting television drama.[4] Although Bowker had a self-confessed "horror of dramatised art biography", he felt that Moyle's book offered something different, viewing the Brotherhood's art largely through the filter of their tangled love lives.[4]

Discussing the series' billing as "Entourage witheasels", Moyle said: "I didn't pitch it as 'Entourage with easels' ... I pitched it as a big emotional saga, a bit likeThe Forsyte Saga. Having said that, I think it was a useful snapshot – a way of getting a handle on the drama."[3] The series had also been billed by the BBC as "marrying the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the values ofDesperate Housewives."[5]

Desperate Romantics was not the first time the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been dramatised for television. In 1967Ken Russell had directedDante's Inferno, and in 1975 there wasThe Love School – a six-part serial first broadcast in 1975. Whereas Bowker's drama about the PRB was an adaptation of Franny Moyles' book,The Love School (scripted by John Hale,Ray Lawler,Robin Chapman andJohn Prebble) was adapted into a novel published byMacmillan in 1975. The new dramatisation was greatly influenced by the earlier series.[6]

Cast

[edit]

Episodes

[edit]
No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal release dateUK viewers
(millions) [7]
1"Episode 1"Paul GayPeter Bowker21 July 2009 (2009-07-21)2.61
Fred Walters introduces the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, to their perfect model: hat shop girl Lizzie Siddal. Fred persuades Lizzie's parents to allow her to model for the Brotherhood, using his mother to vouch for them. After being rejected by theRoyal Academy, the Brotherhood decide to stage an exhibition of their own, and invite influential art critic John Ruskin to attend. Ruskin, who has previously rejected their work, is finally persuaded of their promise, and his encouragement silences their other critics, including the establishment figures who run the Academy.
2"Episode 2"Paul GayPeter Bowker28 July 2009 (2009-07-28)2.13
Having caught the attention of John Ruskin, the Brotherhood attempt to persuade him to buy their work. Millais, preoccupied by thoughts of Ruskin's wife Effie, fails to prevent Lizzie falling unconscious with pneumonia while posing for him as Ophelia, leaving Rossetti bereft at the prospect of losing the woman he loves. When she recovers, her father dashes Millais' hopes of finishing his masterpiece by refusing to allow her to model for the Brotherhood again. On payment of compensation, he relents. The resultant painting is a triumph for the Brotherhood.
3"Episode 3"Paul GayPeter Bowker4 August 2009 (2009-08-04)2.15
The Brotherhood have secured John Ruskin's patronage, but their personal lives are still rife with problems. Fred longs uselessly for Lizzie, who remains besotted with an evasive and lazy Rossetti, once again struggling to apply himself to creating the elusive "masterpiece". Hunt continues to find a conflict between his religion and his desire. Meanwhile, under Ruskin's instruction, Millais beginsThe Order of Release, an evocative painting of Effie; however, he quickly realises that there may be another agenda involved. Spurred on by Rossetti and Hunt, he decides to pursue a sexual relationship with Ruskin's still virginal wife. Annie Miller warns Millais's friends that Ruskin may be planning to set him up as co-respondent in a divorce case, and the tables are turned when Effie obtains an annulment of her marriage on the grounds of non-consummation. She quickly persuades Millais to marry her in order to preserve her good name.
4"Episode 4"Diarmuid LawrencePeter Bowker11 August 2009 (2009-08-11)1.92
With Hunt away in the Holy Land, Fred's promise to take care of Annie takes an unexpected turn when she seduces him. Upon his return, an oblivious Hunt, impressed by Annie's improved deportment and command of etiquette, asks her to marry him. However, he soon realizes that this new stage in their relationship has made him unable to become physically aroused by her. Feeling that their marriage has become impossible, he rejects Annie and, changing his mind again too late, loses her to rakish aristocrat Lord Rosterley. Meanwhile, the prospect of becoming Ruskin's new protégé prompts an excited Rossetti to propose to Lizzie, but he is disappointed and jealous when Ruskin proves more interested in her potential as an artist than Rossetti's and he is obliged to take up a teaching post.
5"Episode 5"Diarmuid LawrencePeter Bowker18 August 2009 (2009-08-18)1.96
Ruskin is displeased by Rossetti and Lizzie's partying and debauchery, funded by his patronage, and orders them to focus on their work, instructing Lizzie to paint each day at his house and Rossetti to complete a church mural. A restless Rossetti embarks on an affair with prostitute Fanny Cornforth, who proves a sensual source of inspiration for his art. Lizzie falls ill as a result of her heartbreak over Rossetti's behaviour and her increasing use of laudanum; Rossetti, under the impression that she is dying, promises they will marry when she recovers. Rossetti invites his students and admirers William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones to join the Brotherhood after they complete the mural for him, just as Ruskin arrives to inspect it. Rossetti and Lizzie marry, and Morris introduces the waitress who caught Rossetti's eye on the morning of the wedding as his sweetheart, Jane Burden.
6"Episode 6"Diarmuid LawrencePeter Bowker25 August 2009 (2009-08-25)1.76
Following her marriage to Rossetti, Lizzie is distraught to discover that Ruskin has lost interest in her as an artist and is now tutoring Rose la Touche instead. Rossetti tries to change Ruskin's mind and warns him that his relationship with the underage Rose may damage his reputation. Millais suggests that the Brotherhood should all move into his new house as an artists' colony. Rossetti takes Morris and Burne-Jones toCremorne Gardens, where he sees Annie, who has returned to prostitution. He pleads with her to return to Hunt, but when she does so, it is to blackmail Hunt by threatening to publish his sexually explicit love letters. Fred warns Lizzie about Rossetti's attraction to Jane Burden, but she throws him out of the house after he tries to seduce her. After a public argument with Lizzie, Rossetti gets drunk with the Brotherhood. When he takes Fred home with him, intending to make his peace with her, he finds Lizzie dead, having deliberately overdosed on laudanum. He and Fred debate whether or not to destroy Lizzie's suicide note. Fred takes it, but cannot bring himself to tell her family. Rossetti implores Jane to marry Morris and paintsBeata Beatrix as a memorial to Lizzie. At her funeral Rossetti throws his manuscript poems into her grave. When Fred, Morris and Burne-Jones praise the buried poems, he decides to dig them up again. Fred is disgusted with Rossetti and finally rejects him.

Works featured

[edit]

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

  • The Scapegoat (1856) by William Holman Hunt
  • Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (1871) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • Study of a Female Nude (1878?) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • The Lady of Shalott (1853) by Elizabeth Siddal
  • Lovers Listening to Music (1854) by Elizabeth Siddal
  • Autumn Leaves (1856) by John Everett Millais
  • The Blind Girl (1856) by John Everett Millais
  • The Ladies' Lament (1856) by Elizabeth Siddal
  • The Rowing Boat (undated, c. 1850–1860) by Elizabeth Siddal
  • Bubbles (1886) by John Everett Millais

Episode 5:

Episode 6:

  • Beata Beatrix (1872) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  • Study of Guinevere for Sir Launcelot in the Queen's Chamber (1857) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Other notable images include:

The poem Rossetti writes for Lizzie as she recuperates from her ordeal in Millais' bath tub is "Sudden Light" (c. 1853–1854, published 1863).[8] The final stanza, which Rossetti reads aloud to Lizzie before they first make love, appears in the 1870 edition of Rossetti'sCollected Poems.[9] Also featured are "Newborn Death" and "The Kiss". The verses read at Lizzie's funeral by her sister are from Lizzie's own poem "Dead Love" (c. 1859).[10]

Historical accuracy

[edit]
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One of the disclaimer slides that appear at the beginning of each episode.

Each episode begins with thedisclaimer: "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 about them, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit."[11] In an interview forThe Independent, Moyle noted that Bowker's adaptation of her source material required a "chronological sleight of hand" turning "the story that plays out in the book over 12 years into something that feels as if it's taking place over a couple of years – to keep up the pace, to make it feel modern."[3]

  • Fred Walters is acomposite character based onFrederic George Stephens,William Michael Rossetti andWalter Deverell, and functions as both narrator andaudience surrogate.[6][12] It was Deverell who discovered Lizzie, and Stephens, in his capacity as an art critic, who acted as the Brotherhood's publicist.
  • Dickens' criticism ofChrist in the House of His Parents is an extract from his original review, titled "Old Lamps for New Ones", that featured in the 15 June 1850 edition ofHousehold Words.
  • Lizzie Siddal's father did indeed claim to be descended from aristocracy, but the family was larger than depicted in the series. She had three sisters and a younger brother. Her father in fact died in 1859, before her marriage to Rossetti.
  • Annie Miller was not working as a prostitute when Hunt first asked her to pose for him, but as a barmaid inCharing Cross Road at the public house frequented by the Brotherhood (though the series is somewhat vague at her introduction as to whether she is a barmaid with other interests, or a prostitute who happens to tend bar). Annie was not the model forThe Hireling Shepherd: a farm worker, Emma Watkins, was.
  • When Effie discovers a collection of erotic drawings byJ. M. W. Turner amongst Ruskin's papers he claims that he is "compelled to destroy them" to protect Turner's posthumous reputation. Biographies of both Turner and Ruskin claimed that Ruskin had burned them in 1858, but this was disproved in 2005 when the sketches were discovered in a neglected archive.[13]
  • Although Lizzie Siddal did catch pneumonia during the painting of Millais'Ophelia, the Brotherhood were not forced to bribe her father to allow her to continue modelling; instead, Siddal's father wrote to Millais asking him to pay a doctor's bill to the sum of £50. According to his son, Millais settled for a lower sum.[14][15]
  • Millais paintedThe Order of Release at the Ruskins' country home in Scotland and not at their townhouse in London.
  • The reason behind Ruskin's inability – or unwillingness – to consummate his marriage to Effie remains the subject of debate amongst his biographers. In 1854, Effie wrote to her father: "He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason [...] that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife [sic] was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening."[16] Ruskin's only word on the matter was in a statement to his lawyer during annulment proceedings: "It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person that completely checked it."[17] It has been speculated that Ruskin's unfamiliarity with the realities of the female body was the reason he felt unable to make love to her, and that it was either the sight of Effie's pubic hair[18] or menstrual blood[19] that informed his disgust. His relationship with Rose la Touche has also led to claims that he was a paedophile, having met her at the age of 10 and stating that he had loved her since their first meeting.[20] This claim is often backed up by letters he sent to illustratorKate Greenaway – asking her to draw children naked.[21] However, he did not approach Rose as a potential suitor until she was 17.[22]
  • Key members and associates of the Brotherhood, such asFord Madox Brown, and Rossetti's brother William and sisterChristina, are conspicuous by their absence.
  • The character of "Lord Rosterley" to whom Annie becomes engaged is based onThomas Heron Jones, 7th Viscount Ranelagh, with whom she was involved.
  • Contrary to the series' depiction, Rossetti had already met Burne-Jones and Morris before they became his students. While they were students at the University of Oxford, they recruited Rossetti to contribute to theirOxford and Cambridge Magazine which Morris founded in 1856 to promote their ideas.[23]
  • Rossetti's church mural is in fact his compositionSir Lancelot's Vision of the Grail for theOxford Union building, which he worked on in collaboration with Morris and Burne-Jones. Rossetti did paint an altarpiece forLlandaff Cathedral,The Seed of David (1858–1859).
  • The series portrays Jane Burden as a woman with an Oxfordshire accent working as a waitress in London, meeting Rossetti by chance after having already become Morris' "sweetheart". In fact Jane Burden was first noticed in her home town by Rossetti and Burne-Jones when they were working on the Oxford murals. She was visiting an Oxford theatre with her sister. They asked her to model for them, and she met Morris as a result. Morris and Jane were married in 1859, three years before Lizzie's death.
  • Lizzie died from alaudanum overdose in 1862, having grown severely depressed after giving birth to a stillborn daughter. Her death was ruled accidental by the coroner, although it has been claimed she did leave a suicide note that Ford Madox Brown suggested Rossetti burn to avoid any scandal. Rossetti did not have the poems he had buried with Lizzie exhumed until 1869, when he and his agent,Charles Augustus Howell, applied to thethen Home Secretary for permission. As depicted in the serial, the manuscript was retrieved in the dead of night to avoid a scandal; Rossetti, however, was not present.
  • Millais shows Rossetti a sketch forBubbles as a forthcoming work. The painting was based on Millais' grandsonWilliam Milbourne James, who was not born until 1881, and was exhibited in 1886 when the grandson was five years old.

Reception

[edit]

WhenDesperate Romantics was first shown on BBC Two it attracted 2.61 million viewers.[7] The first episode received mixed reviews;Tom Sutcliffe inThe Independent described the series as "an off-day" for writer Peter Bowker, adding: "It was never quite recklessly anachronistic enough to suggest a defence of pre-determination for those moments in the script that seemed more like a spoof of an artistic biopic than a genuine attempt to rise above its limitations."[24] Serena Davies wrote inThe Daily Telegraph that the episode: "sadly didn't go far enough in conveying to the viewers how much the Pre-Raphaelites' art contrasted with what had gone before it."[25]Caitlin Moran, reviewing the episode forThe Times, described it as "so bone-deep cheesy that it appears to have been written withPrimula, onKraft Cheese Slices, and shot on location inCheddar."[26]

The Guardian review described the first episode as: "a rollicking gambol through a fictionalised Victorian London with a narrative as contemptuous of historical reverence as its rambunctious subjects were."[27] Andrea Mullaney, writing forThe Scotsman, also considered it: "a rollicking romp ... it's rather good fun", but cautioned: "historical purists will have to clench their thighs as it plays fast and loose with accuracy – much like the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood themselves, for all their vaunted insistence on painting the truth of nature."[28]

The series has been rebroadcast for instance on BBC4 commencing 14 February 2022[29]

References

[edit]
  1. ^"Desperate Romantics - BBC". Archived fromthe original on 19 April 2010. Retrieved22 July 2009.
  2. ^Desperate Romantics press pack: introductionBBC Press Office. Retrieved on 2009-07-24.
  3. ^abcGilbert, Gerard (18 July 2009)."Models, muses, lovers: Bringing art history to the screen".The Independent. Retrieved25 July 2009.
  4. ^abBowker, Peter (16 July 2009)."I always was a desperate romantic".The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved25 July 2009.
  5. ^Jeffries, Stuart (21 July 2009)."Sex and rebellion: Desperate Romantics writer Peter Bowker on his new BBC drama".The Guardian. Retrieved25 July 2009.
  6. ^abChloe Johnson, "Presenting the Pre-Raphaelites: From Radio Reminiscences to Desperate Romantics",Visual Culture in Britain, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 March 2010, pp. 67–92
  7. ^abWeekly Viewing Summary. See relevant channel and week.BARB.
  8. ^Rees, Joan.The Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Modes of Self-Expression. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981
  9. ^Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.Poems. London: F. S. Ellis, 33 King Street, Covent Garden, 1870
  10. ^First published by William Michael Rossetti in "Miss Siddal's Poetry",Ruskin: Rossetti: Pre-Raphaelitism 1854–62, 1899, pp. 150–6
  11. ^Armstrong, Stephen (5 July 2009)."BBC2 drama Desperate Romantics on icons among Pre-Raphaelites".The Sunday Times. London. Archived fromthe original on 26 August 2011. Retrieved25 July 2009.
  12. ^Desperate Romantics press pack: Sam CraneBBC Press Office. Retrieved on 2009-07-25.
  13. ^The Guardian report on the discovery of Turner's drawings
  14. ^J. G. Millais,Life and Letters of John Everett Millais, p. 154
  15. ^Secher, Benjamin (22 September 2007)."Ten things you never knew about Ophelia".The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved3 August 2009.
  16. ^These words are spoken by Effie to Millais in episode three when she reveals that she is still a virgin.
  17. ^Lutyens, M.,Millais and the Ruskins, p. 191
  18. ^Rose, Phyllis,Parallel Lives, 1983
  19. ^Moyle, Franny,Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, 2009
  20. ^Hewison, R.John Ruskin, The Argument of the Eye
  21. ^Lurie, Alison.Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature, 1994
  22. ^Batchelor, J.John Ruskin: No Wealth But Life, 2000
  23. ^Dictionary of National Biography (1901), "William Morris"
  24. ^Sutcliffe, Tom (22 July 2009)."Last Night's Television – Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas; BBC3; Desperate Romantics, BBC2".The Independent. Retrieved24 July 2009.
  25. ^Davies, Serena (22 July 2009)."TV and radio review: Expenses: the MPs' Story".The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved24 July 2009.
  26. ^Moran, Caitlin (25 July 2009)."Desperate Romantics is desperate TV".The Times. London. Retrieved25 July 2009.[dead link]
  27. ^A date with Desperate RomanticsThe Guardian. Retrieved on 2009-07-22.
  28. ^Mullaney, Andrea (18 July 2009)."Television: Desperate Romantics - Storyville: The Time of Their Lives".The Scotsman. Retrieved24 July 2009.
  29. ^Radio Times 12–18 February 2022

External links

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