Guardian Review of Desperate Romantics Episode Three

The artists' energies are flagging, but it still gets pretty torrid amid the canvases and turpentine
 
Lucy Mangan The Guardian, Wednesday 5 August 2009
Samuel Barnett as John Millais and Zoe Tapper as Effie Ruskin in Desperate Romantics.

After a hectic few weeks, in which the air has been thick with blousons being thrown to the wind and breasts billowing no less happily, last night the Desperate Romantics (BBC2) suffered various forms of painter interruptus. Artist William "Maniac" Holman Hunt, still bemused by his attraction to Annie, a woman who drops her aitches with as much alacrity as her knickers, ponders a trip to the Middle East to sort himself out.

Much to his muse's annoyance, Rossetti's inspiration is flagging (this is not a euphemism – Lizzie Siddal's Titian charms are still working their magic on the man behind the canvas). He is reduced to borrowing sketches from fellow painter Millais and passing them off as his to get her off his back. It must have been vexing to discover even Ophelia nags.

But the main thrust – and I use the word entirely inappropriately – of the episode was Millais' attempt to do what his patron Ruskin has urged from the start and bed his (Ruskin's) wife Effie, who (despite looking like the 19th century's answer to Angelina Jolie) is still a virgin after five years of marriage to the non-priapic critic, and fibrillating with sexual frustration.

But Millais is a timid soul. Where Rossetti would have had her banged to rights before Ruskin had closed the door behind him, the best our John can do is promise Effie that if he wasn't British he would "try to take advantage of your predicament". The rest of the pre-Raphaelites rally round. Rossetti lends him the Brotherhood condom. ("Rinse it out afterwards. And before, come to think of it.") Their pet wordsmith, Fred Walters, furnishes him with a few sweet nothings, and off he goes.

Just before the Millaisian worm tries that long-preserved virginity, Annie suggests that Ruskin may be more interested in provoking adultery in order to secure a divorce rather than to aid his wife; the boys rush round and halt proceedings. They encourage Effie to sue for non-consummation of the marriage instead, with Fred duly leaking the story to the press. Afterwards, Millais and Mrs R finally get to do the deed. "Perhaps if you were to move a little back and forward, that would be pleasurable?"

"So it is. So it is."

After a deal of dirty-doggery, Rossetti persuades Maniac to set off for the Holy Land and secures Ruskin's patronage for himself. It all makes The Tudors look like an AJP Taylor lecture, but it's probably more fun than having sex with a stretch of secondhand sheep gut in the way, wouldn't you say?

Original article here.