REMEMBER when BBC period dramas used to follow rules? They bore some resemblance to the novels or histories from whence they came. They were contractually obligated to contain a Dame (Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins). They were adapted by And
rew Davies. And though they had heaving cleavages and suitors in thigh-hugging breeches, there was never a bare boob or bum in sight.
But since the likes of The Tudors, which David Starkey described as "a gratuitously awful bonkorama", period drama has thrown off its corset and become more Belle De Jour than Brontë. It's not really even called period drama anymore. Now it's all about the historical romp.
Starkey wouldn't think much of Desperate Romantics, the BBC series about the band of horny – sorry, Romantic – artists in the mid-19th century known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. For a start it's narrated by a man who never actually existed. Fred Walters is the fictional PRB groupie who runs errands for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Millais. He is tasked with getting Ruskin – the influential art critic played to perfection by Tom Hollander – to endorse the PRB's exhibition because no-one is buying their work; the Royal Academy refers to them as "pavement artists".
But enough about the art. In Desperate Romantics more skirts are lifted than paintbrushes, and the first bare breast bounced into view within three minutes. We even got a disclaimer: "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were inspired by the real world yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story follows in that inventive spirit." Desperate Romantics wears its historical inaccuracy on its historically inaccurate sleeve.
And why shouldn't it go for titillation over truth? It's all good fun if you don't get prissy about the past. Rossetti is the alpha dandy with the attention span of a gnat when it comes to painting, but a true devotee of the art of caressing a woman's breastbone. Aidan Turner pulls off his rakish charm and fish-finger sideburns, but when he uttered such gems as "I couldn't help seeing her potential peeping out where her fastenings didn't meet", I could have done with more eyebrow wiggling. If anything, Desperate Romantics didn't camp it up enough.
With Hunt (the sexually repressed one) and Millais (the one who can actually paint), Rossetti pursued Ruskin's approval and his muse with equal zeal. The search was for a red-haired workaday beauty, and in Lizzie Siddell (played by Scottish actress Amy Manson) and her tresses "like molten lava" they found her. Strangely, every woman in Desperate Romantics – from the prostitute Annie Miller who takes Hunt's virginity to the barmaid – seemed to boast hair "like molten lava".
Nothing much else happened. Dickens popped up a few times to ask Rossetti for money, Siddell sat for the PRB, got thrown out, came back again. Breasts popped out here, there, everywhere. Ruskin kept trying to get away from everyone, even his wife. I didn't learn much about the period (I'm guessing people didn't utter things like "are you saying everything I did before this is shit?" in the 1850s). But who said romps have to tell it like it was?
Thankfully, Nick Ross was on hand in The Truth About Crime to dish up a good dose of reality after such frock-coated frippery. The former Crimewatch presenter was on familiar territory, reminding us calmly and concernedly of all the violence out there. I was willing him to say "don't have nightmares – sleep well" at the end, but it never happened.
The first in this three-part series focused on all the violence that isn't reported, not the stabbings and shootings that make headlines, but the glut of alcohol-fuelled assaults that dominate cities across the UK every weekend. Ross and his team carried out a crime audit, choosing Oxford to spend two weeks swamping the place with cameras, following police, the hospital, other services and victims to get a comprehensive picture of crime. Shot like an episode of 24, lots of frames were shown onscreen at once to signify that a) everyone was very busy and b) this audit was very big.
But the findings were dull; depressing but unsurprising. Most assaults weren't reported, and if they were, only one in 100 resulted in prison, and one in 30 got resolved. Ninety per cent of the people coming in to A&E at Oxford's main hospital on a Friday night were victims of alcohol-fuelled crime. The sister on the ward summed it up best when she said: "Something's got to change, I pick up the pieces every night. It can't go on like this."
I have a feeling she would have balked at the voiceover that kicked off the latest reality TV show, Wildest Dreams, which started last week: "Wildlife filmmaking is one of the most difficult jobs on earth." If it's that hard, I couldn't help thinking, why did the BBC let nine randoms – including a burger bar manager who thought sniffing otter's poo back home made her "a tracker" in the Kalahari desert – compete to win a job at the Natural History Unit? If those were the ones who made it, I dread to imagine the runts of the litter.
Wildlife filmmaker James Honeyborne, leader of the pack, said brilliant things like "Don't shout, don't run. Think about this: out here, food runs." The group travelled to Africa to seek out and film elephants, rhinos, meerkats and lions. They endured an electrical storm in the desert and Nick Knowles' co-presenting.
Some were impressive, others got sunstroke. In the end, Sadia, from London's East End, was the weakest link. She looked on as a roll call of giraffes, herds of zebra, impala and other such wondrous beasts sauntered past her and never once got out her camera. She was sent out to film lions but returned with footage of a tortoise. And the tortoise almost got away.
But I must confess I loved this show. Yes, its cynical conjoining of two of the nation's telly weaknesses – reality TV and wildlife documentaries – worked its magic on me. All that Wildest Dreams was missing was David Attenborough manning the diary room and a money shot of a polar bear cub rolling in the snow. Hopefully, that's all to come.
