Since I first saw a reproduction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Annunciation in my teens, I was besotted with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. So, when the DVD Desperate Romantics, a BBC production of the PBR's lives and loves, made its way into our collection, I was intrigued.

I admit, I was hesitant once starting it. This was not what I expected. This was no documentary of intellectual, talented gentlemen. Although set in mid-19th century England, Desperate Romanticshas a very modern feeling about it, from the artists walking abreast down the street, almost strutting in their high-fashioned, Bohemian influenced wardrobe, the music-video inspired camera angles, to the 20th century influence in the soundtrack, this is an historical tale told with a contemporary twist.

The story centres around the three founders of the PBR, Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, the youngest painter ever accepted by The Royal Academy. "The Boys," as they are often called in this production, are three very disparate personalities: Millais, the prodigy, is timid, proper, somewhat frightened of authority, but the most virtuous. Hunt is intense, earnest, and, frankly, annoying. And Rossetti is passionate, flirtatious, immoral, at first charming, but later, also annoying. And infuriating. Not that this is bad; it makes great viewing.

The story opens with Fred Walters, a fictional character who is a conglomeration of several PBR friends and associates, running madly to find The Boys after he has laid eyes on the exquisite Elizabeth Siddal, a hat-shop girl who fits the criteria of what the PBR is looking for in a model. Lizzie is wanted by all three artists (in multiple ways Rossetti), but it is while she is sitting (or soaking) for Millais as Ophelia, she is taken with an illness and nearly dies. Hunt finds a new model in the "grubby" Annie Miller, here portrayed as a prostitute. Annie is a character who, despite her low-bred birth and upbringing, is smart, cunning, honest in a way Hunt cannot be, and utterly charming and delightful. Millais, meanwhile, is commissioned by the highly influential art critic John Ruskin to paint his wife, Effie. The sordid (or not so sordid) details of their five year marriage come to light, in which Millais finds himself entwined, so to speak.

One of the reasons I love the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is the purity of the subjects, true love, sacrifice, spirituality; you wouldn't think these were subjects that came easily to this lot. Hunt and especially Rossetti are portrayed as lustful, raunchy, and appalling in their behaviours with women, but then would be tender, poetic and seemingly genuine in their feelings for the women they scorned. This dichotomy of spirit, portrayed by wonderful young actors, makes for a wonderful, escapist six hours.