Desperate Romantics

A 2009 miniseries made by the BBC revolving around the lives of Pre-raphaelite brotherhood painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Millais. The series is notable for its blatant use of Artistic Licence History, explicitely presented as a meta-commentary on the artistic licence that was used by the artists themselves. The painters are seen as a gang of rowdy young men who drink, fight, fall in love and get wrapped up in drama. Also, there are tits and bums and Everybody Has Lots of Sex.


 * Candlelit Bath: Lizzie poses for Millais as Ophelia in a tub of water heated by candles. They go out. She loses consciousness and almost drowns...
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Fred
 * Five-Man Band:
 * The Hero - Fred
 * The Lancer - Gabriel
 * The Big Guy - Holman Hunt
 * The Smart Guy - Millais
 * The Chick - Elizabeth Siddal
 * Handsome Lech: Gabriel
 * Hollywood Sex: rampant, but the redeeming feature of it all is that Gabriel and Lizzie, when newly married, talk earnestly of dispensing with contraception and trying for a baby, acknowledging that yes, sheaths do exist (one is graphically brandished early on in the series) and have been used.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Gabriel comes across like this some of the time, though to be fair, he's more often using an Indy Ploy than a Xanatos Gambit.
 * Smug Snake: What Gabriel is when he's not a Magnificent Bastard.
 * Starving Artist: Gabriel