Byron

In the end how do you judge a man like George Gordon Byron? He certainly left a nice body of work to judge him as writer and poet. It might have been more had he spent a little more time at creation and less indulging every kind of vice there was. As he puts it so accurately pleasure is the only real reason we know we're alive.

This film covers the period of 1812 to 1824 from the publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage until his death. He's quite the toast of Regency London and he's welcome by dint of his work and title in the best of homes. He soon wears out that welcome in a series of scandalous affairs. Regency society didn't mind affairs, but just be discreet. Discreet did not exist in his vocabulary.

Byron's personal life is probably best known for his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. But this film shows she's only one of many. Camilla Power plays her and Power is in the film long enough to show what a mad woman she was. A little too much for a lover and a husband to handle.

I can't think of anything Byron missed. He made it with any woman who showed the slightest interest, even a little incest with a sister. He indulged himself in the love that dares not speak its name with a young boy. He drank to excess, took opiates at a rate that his contemporary Coleridge might have envied. There's brief scene of him turtling down some Laudanum like it was a brewski.

I think he envied the Shelleys played here by Sally Hawkins and Oliver Dimsdale. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley were his contemporaries and they seemed to find happiness that was unattainable for Byron.

Jonny Lee Miller plays the title role and makes Byron the last word in hedonism. He strikes just the right notes and pulls a lot of emotions from the viewer. You envy him and yet you're jealous of him. He's rich with a title which allows him to indulge. We'd all like to be him, but the business of day to day living leaves 95% of us with enough challenges for our lives.

This BBC production of Byron is both revealing and non-judgmental. It will give you a good understanding of the man who in many ways was the symbol of the romantic age.

I pulled up "Byron" from the profile of the screenwriter, Nick Dear, who did such an amazing job in compressing "Persuasion" into two hours in 1995. I looked forward to seeing his handling of the more difficult & complex character & works of Byron.

Whether it was an incompetent production team or director, there is no baseline from which to spin out the story. Apart from the remarkable resemblance of the actor to Byron's facial appearance, neither actor nor director appeared to give any thought at all to the man behind what masks he might be donning successively. He almost seems like a travesty of his own hero-manqué, Don Juan. Those elements of his character which made him notable as well as scandalous are missing, none of the irresistibility or wit. The eroticism is singularly banal and vacuous.

Perhaps they redeemed this mess in the second part, but I was so indifferent to it all that neither I nor my wife were inclined to jump into the trash again to look for a gem. Or as Samuel Johnson said "I do not expect, on picking up a web (of a tapestry) and finding packthread, to discover, further inspection, embroidery."

I find myself disagreeing with a previous reviewer. Byron was indeed a beast, apparently, but because Miller plays him as a damned beast, I found myself sympathetic toward the character.

I thought the casting was good, and especially liked "Lady Caroline"'s insanity -- what a hairdo! Lovely costuming. "Shelley" was excellent, too. He seemed soulful, half-crazed, and damned as well. Weren't all the Romantics...?

And Vanessa Redgrave, of course, was marvelous. One could actually imagine how, if there "had been fewer years between (them)," it might have been a very short dinner, indeed.

Inner-City High School English Teacher Central Valley, California

Thoroughly enjoyed the performances. Hated the character Byron. I'm a Yank and was told f'all about, well, most poets. Anyhow, I enjoyed the telling and as a HUGE fan of Elementary, I definitely saw the beginnings of Miller's portrayal of Sherlock.

This is the only film depiction of Byron I've seen that attempts to portray him as the clever, funny man that he was rather than some cartoon goth with a big floaty cloak, eyeliner and an evil, reverberating laugh. Other films tend to be simple, self-indulgent perpetuations of Byron's partially self-made myth and this film is the only one I have seen so far that shows something of what was beneath: Regency society seen through Lord Byron's eyes as he rips the piss. Jonny Lee Miller carries off the parallel aspects of Byron's personality with aplomb, making him smug and petulant while unavoidably charismatic and likable. Of course it's still all conjecture, as is emphasised at the start of the film, but as far as Byron films go, there's nothing out there to touch this.