is anyone watching 'desperate romantics' on bbc2 atm? with the useless mp from 'in the loop' as john ruskin?

and brian from spaced as charles dickens?

well is it any good?

well, no: but it had hollander pawing furtively at charcoal sketches of ppl copulating while nightmarish visions of same assailed his eyes. then he burnt them. it was a very odd thing & i wonder what someone who knew a little more about the 19th-century art world would make of it

i kept thinking it seemed almost to want millais, rossetti & hunt to be played by vince vaughn, ben stiller and will ferrell

I know very little of 19th century art, but it was good fun, I don't think it's exactly meant to be a historically accurate biopic. Also called Desperate Romantics, if you want anyone to be able to find it via search. I thought it needed the guys from The Inbetweeners to be in the lead roles, the voiceover one was pure Will.

Was this a repeat? I saw something that fits the description a couple of years ago.

There was one with poets last year with David Tennant in it, except it wasn't quite so wackily rompy. This wasn't a repeat, no.

Ah that was the one I saw.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/aug/15/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-desperate-romantics

"over-sexed straggle-haired artists rut their way round Olde London Towne like some skinny-jeaned Hoxton indie band on the up"

I sat through about the first 15 minutes of the first episode of this. That was enough, frankly.

ha, i wouldn't argue it's actually good

it doesn't go quite far enough in the direction of ridiculousness. it feels a bit like you're being stealthily taught things

I like this. Reminds me a lot of Ken Russell's biopics.

Also called Desperate Romantics, if you want anyone to be able to find it via search.

I had this exact problem.

I'm quite enjoying it. Morris turns up tonight and looks rather too fat in the clip but anything about Morris is fine with me.

I really really really want to see this so badly. Seeing as how I adore Pre Raphaelites but also love a trashy historical rubbishing and, erm, skinny-jeaned indie bands, or, erm, something.

Can't wait until it comes out on DVD because the worse that I hear it is, the more I want to see it.

The whole thing (up to now) is on iplayer.

I don't think it's that bad from an historical perspective. It seems to fuck around with dates and I'm not sure quite how many times they just happened to knock into Dickens, and obviously there were more of the PRB than the three here, but the basic plot is rooted in what happened. Also it says at the beginning of each episode that it's taking liberties. It's just a bit of fun with some nice stuff about the paintings thrown in.

People take these types of dramas too seriously really. I went to Kelmscott at the w/end and it was packed which I feel must have been linked to the influence of this prog (people asking about the Rossetti connection, etc.) and, for me, that's all good. I'm all for spreading the word about the PRs and Morris.

i meant to link germaine greer on this

thx whoever fixed the title. oops again ¬_¬

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/16/pre-raphaelite-brotherhood-germaine-greer

("The only desperate thing about the pre-Raphaelites was their truly bad art")

She was on last week's prog, so I guess not on this weeks.

Read Greer's article - aw, bless.

I happen to have a real soft spot for precisely the kind of bad art that the PRS produced, though.

That Greer article is not very good. The first sentence is just wrong and is it me or is the last papragraph almost unreadable? If she had added "will this do?" on the end I might not have even noticed.

And (just to be a dull pedant) she is confusing Millais allowing his painting (Bubbles) to be used as a print to allowing it to be used to sell soap (which he could do nothing about). No doubt she knows this as well as she knows that Millais was an influence on Van Gogh. But ho hum, I am taking it all too seriously which I said I wouldn't do.

when greer's g2 stuff tends towards the unreadable it's always because she's trying to cram a lot of fact and/or opinion into a one-page column: i don't think she's "will this do?" at all; try reading any of the other people who write one-page columns for g2 and say that

buuuuuut i don't know enough about the PRB to discuss the actual content, i'm afraid

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/aug/15/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-desperate-romantics

"over-sexed straggle-haired artists rut their way round Olde London Towne like some skinny-jeaned Hoxton indie band on the up"

Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe started off like this, and then said "Actually, I think that's unfair!" and it ended up as 'it's OK' basically.

what?