This series is a remarkable portrait of the Bloomsbury group, and the large cast is universally excellent. The sexual radicalism of many of the characters is handled in a way that is very explicit but also sensitive. One imagines that some viewers would find some of the scenes shocking, especially those involving Duncan Grant's sexual relationships with other men.
But the writers and artists in the Bloomsbury group were all about disregarding the constricting social norms of early 20th century England, so it is appropriate that this series contains some graphic scenes and images.
The photography is very artistic and evocative, and it suggests Vanessa Bell's modernist perspective as an artist. Vanessa is at the heart of the drama, and her character is fully developed and very nuanced. Her love for the gay painter Duncan Grant, superbly played by James Norton, is perhaps the most poignant of all the romances that are shown here.
I wish more attention had been paid to Virginia Woolf who was, after all, the most significant and most brilliant of the Bloomsbury group. Her emergence as a novelist, the woman who became England's greatest novelist of her era, is glossed over. But the series is so unusually in its atmospheric depiction of the lives of these various free spirits that Virginia not getting enough attention can be forgiven.
I would definitely like to see more series about authors and artists whose lives defied social conventions.
