The Romantics and Us

Having very much enjoyed Simon Schama's very long but very well-paced "A History of Britain", I was disappointed by this long-winded and dubious attempt to connect the Romantics to the present day.

Simon Schama's thesis: "You may think our modern world was born yesterday. But it wasn't. Not even the day before yesterday. Democracy in the streets and the rise of people power... the raw passion of national belonging... good and bad... our obsession with the self, with our own psychology and the dark recesses of the human mind... even our love of nature, with our concern for the future of the planet... all of this was the creation of the Romantics."

As another (more knowledgeable) reviewer writes: "[...] the first episode narrative essentially suggests the Romantics invented the right to protest, completely overlooking all of history's previous protests during feudalism [...]".

Not only am I not convinced that Simon Schama's thesis is correct, but an argument that could have been made in a single programme of at most 90 minutes, is stretched out to 3 hours. For example, the analysis of The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault just goes on and on and adds no real weight to Simon Schama's thesis.

This feels very much like it was an attempt to produce 3 hours of programming, rather than a meaningful and impartial attempt to assess the relevance of the Romantics to life in the present day.

Thank heavens for people like Simon Scharma. In a world bombarded by mindless tweets from morons and brain dead celebrities, this series is an enema for the residual sludge that clogs our conscious/unconscious barrier. Even though Schama's analysis tries to explains the roots of our present malaise particularly with the nationalistic/parochial reaction of the Romantics to the Enlightenment, which may not be in agreement with some, it is his questioning of the very nature of the human psyche through this turbulent historical period that brings great joy to those of us blunted by the endless streamed serial killer/comedy/political pap that is dished up to us like the recycled manure fed to the animals we eat. It is a sign of the attention span of the current generation that the series is too short. I only hope he extends the series into later 1800s revolutionaries eg Rimbaud, Nietzche but thank you anyway.

Televisual history of art at its absolute best. Thought provoking, emotive and beautifully photographed. Wallow, immerse and celebrate.