Desperate Romantics is a funny and lively tale of three ground-breaking artists
Jul 19 2009 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

IT’S a drama about 19th Century artists and their love affairs. But if that doesn’t sound exactly thrilling, give Desperate Romantics a go, as it boasts a great young cast, lavish settings and a surprisingly exciting and funny script.

The six-part series is set in London and follows the adventures of three men who would become one of Britain’s most important art movements, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

There’s our cover star Aidan Turner who, fresh from playing a vampire in Being Human, is now Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rafe Spall, son of Tim, is William Holman Hunt and Samuel Barnett, from The History Boys, is John Everett Millais.

The cast also includes Tom Hollander, Zoe Tapper and Amy Manson.

The group of revolutionary artists were as well-known for their scandalous love lives as for their ground-breaking paintings. They had a habit of falling for their models, which just wasn’t the done thing in polite Victorian society.

BBC drama boss Kate Harwood says: “Desperate Romantics paints a modern, vivid and irreverent portrait of a group of young painters whose attitude to the establishment makes them comparable to the punks a hundred years later.”

Desperate Romantics is written by Peter Bowker, who also penned the recent drama Occupation about the Iraq War.

He explains: “Rossetti was very funny and charismatic. I think we’ve all met or known people like this, women fall for them and men love their company. Millais was a child prodigy, who I’ve re-imagined with some of the traits of a member of a boy band!

“With Holman Hunt, the key was his very disturbed sexual passion in conflict with his religious zealousness, a simultaneous revulsion and fascination with prostitution.”

Peter also added writer Fred Walters (Sam Crane), an amalgam of several real people.

Rossetti found his favourite model Lizzie Siddal (Amy Manson) in a hat shop. They embark on an affair and got engaged, but that didn’t stop him having affairs. She features in Millais’ Ophelia, in which she floated in a bathtub full of water to replicate drowning and caught pneumonia.

After taking on Rossetti, Aidan Turner says he’d like to become more of his heroes: “I’d love to play Napoleon but I’m probably too tall. I’m slightly obsessed with him. I’d also love to play Barry McGuigan, the Irish boxer, but I look nothing like him. He’s tiny and he’s got this funny ‘tache and looks very Irish and I don’t!”

If the drama sparks an interest in Pre-Raphaelite art, you don’t have to go far to look at some of the best of their paintings, as Birmingham Art Gallery’s collection of Pre-Raphaelite works by the Brotherhood is world famous.

Original article here.