Rupert Everett has decided to do the honourable public school gay thing, and pretend to be an expert about something. He's chosen Byron, mainly because it allows him to say 'fucking' a lot while wearing trackies on a gondola, much as his last subject, Sir Richard Burton, allowed him to do the same in bedouin tents.
Essentially, he's choosing subjects that allow him to talk about hedonistic sex ad nauseum. And the nausea does come, in this case while he's having a tenuously Byronic gonorrhea test. Still, he rolls out the experts: historians, fancy dress costumiers and Donatella Versace, who nods while Rupes drones on about Caroline Lamb and then asks whether Byron should have had therapy. Good point, Donzi.
This documentary is like a someone paraphrasing the vainglorious and innacurate Byron scholars in Stoppard's play Arcadia in the manner of Cher from Clueless. It would have been brilliant as a Kath and Kim-style comedy, but sadly he really meant all this stuff. Even the hideously patronising rent-a-camp ending in a bingo hall. Poor old Oscar is next, I fear.
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Oh dear. This post's a nice accompaniment to Alex's piece, which I very much enjoyed reading. I realised I had to stop watching this sort of television a few years back when I was watching something in which a pretty woman in a mop-cap appeared on the screen and started giving a talking head. After a couple of seconds, with deep sincerity, as if she was some expert on Newsnight, the legend appeared: GEORGE ELIOT.
ReplyDeleteOh god, save us from the drama documentary... 'I am a seventeenth-century highwayman...' No you're not, you were in Casualty last week being electrocuted by a faulty Breville.
ReplyDelete...be careful what you wish for, it's only a matter of time before David Furnish has another go at producing for TV.
ReplyDeleteHe should stick to writing silly books about hairdressers in San Tropez. Or maybe an unofficial biog about the life of the early Madonna.
ReplyDelete