Well, it seems that Artillery Man has been forced out of semi retirement by the really rather unexpected excellence of the recent Torchwood five-parter. Who would have thought that something that had previously always been something of a guilty pleasure would suddenly transform itself into the what could quite possibly be the best piece of TV drama of the year.
And what with the return of Jimmy McGovern's The Street and with Dominic Savage's Freefall getting more right than it did wrong, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the recent onslaught of dramatic misfires (do I really need to name them again?) was finally at an end. Maybe it was time for Artillery Man to hang up his poison pen once and for all.
And then Desperate Romantics came along.
Regular (and long suffering) readers of this blog will know that I really didn't hold out any hope for this drama of being any cop. To reiterate, the basic pitch was described as "a Pre-Raphaelite Entourage" and that pretty much says all you need to know about the mindset behind commissioning this nonsense.
While it was admittedly not as bad as expected, it was still pretty dire. It was aiming for edgy and irreverent, but as has been noted elsewhere, what it actually managed to achieve was something like the tone of a poor Carry On film. It's not that any single element can be singled out as being particularly awful - it was competently acted and some of the performances were even bordering on quite good and the writing was on the whole pretty sound. But the basic problem was that the whole show was actually based on a faulty premise.
The basic problem is that it suffered from the arrogance that often seems to beset the commissioning process these days. The earnest desire to be 'street' and 'relevant' actually betrays an arrogance on the behalf of the programme makers. It seems to be saying that 'while we can appreciate the contribution of the Pre-Raphaelites, the proles on the street won't unless we dumb it down with some laddish japes and plenty of tits'. But rest assured, the viewing public is not as thick as they seem to think.
I believe the time is right to look again at the Pre-Raphaelites and a fascinating series can be made out of it. And yes it can be edgy and it can be explicit. But what's required is to decide on whether or not the story demands such treatment. Tone should be at the service of story, not the other way around. It seemed to be another example of the writer being reduced to a glorified PA, reduced to taking down the shopping list of ideas of the 'creatives' at the top of the food chain.
I haven't read the book on which this series is based and on the strength of this adaptation I really have no desire to. One would hope that it is a bit more serious in its intention that the series is because as it stands this show seems to be just a collection of raucous set pieces simply tagged onto the name of Rossetti et al.
Another fine (and frustrating) example of just how schizophrenic the BBC's drama output is these days.

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And what with the return of Jimmy McGovern's The Street and with Dominic Savage's Freefall getting more right than it did wrong, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the recent onslaught of dramatic misfires (do I really need to name them again?) was finally at an end. Maybe it was time for Artillery Man to hang up his poison pen once and for all.
And then Desperate Romantics came along.
Regular (and long suffering) readers of this blog will know that I really didn't hold out any hope for this drama of being any cop. To reiterate, the basic pitch was described as "a Pre-Raphaelite Entourage" and that pretty much says all you need to know about the mindset behind commissioning this nonsense.
While it was admittedly not as bad as expected, it was still pretty dire. It was aiming for edgy and irreverent, but as has been noted elsewhere, what it actually managed to achieve was something like the tone of a poor Carry On film. It's not that any single element can be singled out as being particularly awful - it was competently acted and some of the performances were even bordering on quite good and the writing was on the whole pretty sound. But the basic problem was that the whole show was actually based on a faulty premise.
The basic problem is that it suffered from the arrogance that often seems to beset the commissioning process these days. The earnest desire to be 'street' and 'relevant' actually betrays an arrogance on the behalf of the programme makers. It seems to be saying that 'while we can appreciate the contribution of the Pre-Raphaelites, the proles on the street won't unless we dumb it down with some laddish japes and plenty of tits'. But rest assured, the viewing public is not as thick as they seem to think.
I believe the time is right to look again at the Pre-Raphaelites and a fascinating series can be made out of it. And yes it can be edgy and it can be explicit. But what's required is to decide on whether or not the story demands such treatment. Tone should be at the service of story, not the other way around. It seemed to be another example of the writer being reduced to a glorified PA, reduced to taking down the shopping list of ideas of the 'creatives' at the top of the food chain.
I haven't read the book on which this series is based and on the strength of this adaptation I really have no desire to. One would hope that it is a bit more serious in its intention that the series is because as it stands this show seems to be just a collection of raucous set pieces simply tagged onto the name of Rossetti et al.
Another fine (and frustrating) example of just how schizophrenic the BBC's drama output is these days.
