Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

A lot of fun.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Yes, well it may not be completely accurate and the writers may have taken certain liberties with the characters and the timelines, but I thoroughly enjoyed this show. It's a fast, funny, witty, sexy romp which doesn't take itself too seriously. The chemistry between the leads is palpable, as is the fact that everyone seems to be having a really good time playing some very interesting characters. I've watched it about three times now over the years and have enjoyed it every time. It's also made me curious to read up more about the PRB and their work. The actual PRB and their circle were, in many ways, extraordinary and occasionally over the top, and their lives were pretty fantastical, so this version really isn't much a stretch - I rather think they would have appreciated the 'inventive spirit' of the show's creators in bringing a contemporary interpretation of their story to the screen, as mentioned in the introduction / disclaimer at the beginning. If you want a staid art history docu-drama, this may not be for you. But if you want a fun, well made, entertaining, modern interpretation of a particular time and place and a group of people whose lives were, at times, stranger than fiction, go for it.

It takes a lot of hack-work to make a mess out of the incredibly intriguing and colorful story of the Pre-Raphaelite painters in Victorian England, but boy they managed it here. This is a juvenile, tedious, badly acted and worse-written mess. Evidently to make up for the lack of intelligent script or acting, the BBC threw in as much sex and nudity as possible.There's no effort to even remotely approach the truth, and we never really see the paintings, which should be the star of the whole series. Everyone agrees that the best thing about the show is the costumes, but that doesn't make for intelligent viewing. I couldn't make it past 45 minutes of the series without getting incredibly bored.I'm really disappointed lately with the hack-work -- which relies completely on visuals and titillation for its appeal -- that is coming out of the BBC in their period pieces these days. Take me back 5, 10, 15 or more years ago when the BBC was at the height of its period-piece glory. Now it's like everything else -- all show and titillation and lowbrow appeal, no intelligence or thought.

Like thousands of other people with an unhealthy pre-Raphaelite biography habit (okay, obsession), I could supply a long and tedious list of the "errors" in this series. But factual accuracy (as Dickens knew) can only take us so far. It was made pretty clear that Desperate Romantics isn't in that game; isn't even trying. We have been supplied with a clear weekly disclaimer, a witty title that referred to another work of fiction, and anyone following up their viewing with even the most cursory research will have discovered soon enough that one of the main characters is a complete invention.When the modern imagination takes up the past - rifling the texts, rampaging in the (usually metaphorical, but in this instance literal) graveyards and taking all manner of liberties - the result is often compelling. It's what we seem to be doing, culturally, at the moment: as Desperate Romantics ended this week, it can't just be co-incidence that a second series of the Tudors began on the same channel.The past has gone and we can never really know - viscerally - what it was like. And there is a risk that, the more we read, the more our knowledge of other days and other lives is freighted with knowledge at the expense of engagement. By some alchemy, imaginative TV and film can wreak a marvellous feat of resurrection. Costume drama of the conventional kind just doesn't do it, at least not for me. No, it's that wrenching round of the past to align with the present; the striking and deliberate archaism dropped into otherwise contemporary phrasing; flamboyant 21st century sexuality played out against nineteenth century lighting, set-dressing and costume. Your favourite bit of cultural history is here in your living room - and this time you can see and hear it live. Whether you're ready or not, whether it's realistic or not, it's come through into your 21st century head.And so this wonderful, post-modern world we live in brings the dead alive, although probably not as they would have wished. We'll never know about that, although one assumes that if any of the real-life protagonists had retained enough of an individual identity in the great beyond to know or care what modern TV has made of them, Broadcasting House would have been in receipt of a few disabling thunderbolts by now. The most deserved of these would have come from William Morris, the only character who strikes a false note in that the portrayal seems neither sympathetic nor prompted by what we know of his life and thought. Random injustice to the greatest thinker and human being, if not the most creative individual, amongst the lot of them - and he didn't really have to be in this series at all, did he? So the representation was gratuitous as well, and perhaps politically motivated.Okay - so, like all the best pleasures, my enjoyment of Desperate Romantics has been attended with some unease. As the Victorians probably knew all too well, rightness - in the sense of rectitude rather than fitness for purpose - and propriety are tricky matters to address when they compromise our joys. As we are not Victorians, these issues are unlikely to exercise a TV company in comparison with ratings, word-of-mouth buzz, or saleability on DVD (I'm already in the queue on Amazon). It is a nice little irony that the Pre-Raphaelites themselves did the mediaeval world much as theirs has now been done by, and the same parallel could be drawn between Rossetti's treatment of Dante's story and the BBC's treatment of his own.

Anybody watching the series expecting a realistic portrayal of the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood will be disappointed however those just wanting an enjoyable romp with a good story that is well acted then this is just the thing. The characters were delightfully over the top without coming over as parodies.The story follows the lives of artists Millais, Rossetti and Hunt along with their fictional friend Fred Walters as they recruit models Lizzie Siddal and Annie Miller and fall in love with them. The other main character is John Ruskin who supports their work.While we do see some of their art the series was far more interested in their romantic entanglements which means there many sex scenes which means a fair amount of nudity... no strategically positioned sheets here. Another main theme is their quest to gain a patron who will enable them to become established.From the moment it starts it is clear that this is going to be a romp as the music is as over the top that the story it goes with. Some people might not like this but I found it very jolly and suited to the story. The acting was fine throughout, I especially liked Amy Manson and Jennie Jacques's performances as Lizzie and Annie, I can see why the men in the story were besotted by their characters.