The Romantics

BBC Series

R2

DVD

The Romantics is a somewhat eccentric and unusual series narrated by Peter Ackroyd exploring the development of the movement in art, literature and poetry known as Romanticism.

It is presented over three hour long episodes which offer a comprehensive background to the development of the various aspects of the movement and the context in which it evolved.

The focus is on the Romantic poets and covers William Blake, Lord Byron, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth. Each episode is presented using recreations of key events, actors playing the various figures and readings from key words of poetry.

It is presented using the original locations (even when they have been changed or built over), carefully chosen special effects and an intriguing narration which is informative but entertaining.

It is a fascinating and challenging series as it traces the movement from Rousseau and the ideals of the French Revolution, through the period of terror and its excesses to the development of the concept of individual freedom and democracy as expressed through the poets. It explores the ideals at the heart of American democracy as well as the Romantics.

In the final episode Ackroyd explores a new generation of Romantics who moving away from religion and god find a new faith in poetry. As science reduced man to a machine through the study of medicine and anatomy, Romanticism rebelled and saw man as potentially divine in his own right. Shelley and Bryon applied this new approach in forging their own poetic worlds as well as their own new social and sexual mores which scandalised the society around them. Indeed Byron became a literal outcast due to his way of living and thinking, while Shelly’s work on atheism got him expelled from Oxford and started his new quest for a different paradigm of the world.

There are some excellent actors playing the major roles Dudley Sutton as William Blake, Joseph Millson ad Lord Byron, Rafe Spall as John Clare, Martin Savage as Colerige, Nicholas Shaw as Keats, Blake Ritson as Shelley and David Threlfall as Wordsworth

Throughout this remarkable series we come to appreciate the unique changes brought about in the 19th century which literally created the perceptions we have of the world today.

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