Desprate Romantics

The series was inspired by and takes its title from Franny Moyle's factual book about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives Of The Pre-Raphaelites.[2]

Moyle, a former commissioning editor for the arts at the BBC,[3] approached writer Peter Bowker with the book, believing it could form the basis of an interesting television drama.[4] Although Bowker had a self-confessed "horror of dramatised art biography", he felt that Moyle's book offered something different, viewing the Brotherhood's art largely through the filter of their tangled love lives.[4]

Discussing the series' billing as "Entourage with easels", Moyle said: "I didn't pitch it as 'Entourage with easels' ... I pitched it as a big emotional saga, a bit like The Forsyte Saga. Having said that, I think it was a useful snapshot – a way of getting a handle on the drama."[3] The series has also been billed by the BBC as "marrying the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the values of Desperate Housewives."[5]

Desperate Romantics was the second time the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been dramatised for television, the first being The Love School – a six-part serial first broadcast in 1975. Whereas Bowker's drama about the PRB was an adaptation of Franny Moyles' book, The Love School (scripted by John Hale, Ray Lawler, Robin Chapman and John Prebble) was adapted into a novel published by Macmillan in 1975. The new dramatisation was heavily influenced by the earlier series.

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