Charlie Brooker's review in the Guardian nails its appeal, I think -
"Charlie Brooker in The Guardian:
Call me an easily impressed nincompoop, but any drama serial that opens with a caption which effectively states "the following is a load of bollocks" instantly gets my attention. So it is with Desperate Romantics (Tue, 9pm, BBC2), which absolves itself of any claim to historical accuracy via its title card. "The pre-Raphaelite brotherhood were inspired by the real world, yet took imaginative licence," it says. "This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit." It's the equivalent of "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... ", or perhaps more accurately, "Sod off, pedants."
I don't know much about art, but I know what I like, and at first I was inclined to dislike this. A frothy period romp in which a bunch of over-sexed straggle-haired artists rut their way round Olde London Towne like some skinny-jeaned Hoxton indie band on the up: no thanks. The cast are young and attractive, the lead character an arrogant cock of galactic proportions, and it features walk-on parts for historical figures that even an ill-educated boob like me can recognise ("Guys, guys! Charles Dickens just walked in"), all of which should leave it feeling like a poor man's Blackadder minus the gags.
So imagine my irritation on discovering I rather enjoyed it. For one thing, it's acutely aware of precisely how stupid it's being, and it gleefully exploits that to the full - which, when you think about it, is actually very clever. Think of the Comic Strip's Hollywood rewrite parodies Strike! and GLC: it borders on those.
This is one of the most knowing programmes I've seen in ages; so knowing it virtually sits on the sofa beside you, watching itself and taking the piss. Under normal circumstances that would be irritating. Here it's just playful. "Playfulness" is an incredibly hard thing to capture on screen in a scripted drama, but here everyone seems to have worked together with just the right lightness of touch. Peter Bowker's script, the direction, the performances, the music ... there's an impressive consistency of tone throughout. The theme tune just about sums it up: a cheerily preposterous sort of glam-rock-romantic-classical-fusion stomp.
I have absolutely no idea what the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood were like in real life, but it's probably safe to say they weren't like this: a trio of brawling, shagging, foppish cartoons strutting around the city dressed like rejected character designs for Doctor Who. They spend very little time intensely discussing their art, and very much time gawping at knockers. At times it feels like a period costume spin-off of The Inbetweeners (sometimes precisely so, given the nerdy narration device that bookends each episode).
Yet this doesn't matter for two reasons: 1) It's got enough charm to get away with it, and 2) A series in which the pre-Raphaelites intensely discussed their art would've been po-faced and terrible. Far better to portray them as flawed, foolish, full-of-it swaggerers possessing a combination of genuine talent and daft pretension. It may be a caricature, but it's probably closer to the truth than the traditional, boring route, which is to depict any artist as an unbelievably serious tormented genius who spends 50% of his screen time speaking in brooding aphorisms, 10% painting a naked pair of tits, and the remaining 40% smashing up his studio in an oblique artistic funk - and who we're supposed to respect and admire regardless because, hey, he's a brilliant artist, yeah? Pfff.
All of the above dramatised-artist tropes - the pretentious-speak, the canvas-smashing, the tit-painting - do crop up in Desperate Romantics but crucially they're suffused with oafish humour. These pre-Raphaelites are arses, not smartarses (sometimes the programme doesn't seem to even like them or their paintings very much, which is refreshing in itself).
An enjoyable Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Twat, then?
Yup. That just about sums it up."
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