Byron

The New York Sun, October 21, 2005

There is something a little peculiar about the BBC's advance publicity for "Byron," a half-hidden hint of embarrassment, a discreet cough of discomfort, which suggests it's a touch worried that this glossy, entertaining new biopic might, like the unfortunate Lady Byron, be taken the wrong way.

Could it be that "Byron," which airs at 9 p.m. this Saturday on BBC America, is an unsuitably aristocratic topic for the obligatory, if strained, New Labour egalitarianism of the British broadcaster? Just in case it could, the BBC takes pains to quote earnest claims by "Byron" star Jonny Lee Miller ("Trainspotting" and Angelina Jolie), that the wicked Lord B. - a man who spent a lifetime milking his aristocratic status for all it was worth, and who was ready to use the poetry of social disdain against those who crossed him (such as his wife's governess, "born in the garret, in the kitchen bred") - "wasn't a snob."

Or was the relentlessly preachy and tiresomely progressive BBC worried that this largely sympathetic drama could be seen as condoning the sexism, and worse, of a man all too often capable of the epic cruelty of the incurably selfish? To name just a few of the women left wailing and wrecked in the Byronic wake, his wife was driven to leave him; his daughter Allegra (the mother, alas, was not poor Lady Byron) was neglected; and when naughty Susan Vaughan, one of his servants (and the mother of yet another Byron bastard) was impudent, and tactless, enough to enjoy a quick fling with Robert Rushton, Byron's, ahem, page (Byron, needless to say, had already done the same thing), she was fired.

None of this is likely to endear Byron to a modern audience; it didn't play too well even back then. Once again, the trusty Lee Miller tries to come up with the necessary unguent, but I'm not sure that it does the trick: "I certainly don't like the way he treated some people, but the lighthearted side of him surprised me." Oh well, so long as he was "lighthearted."

As it happens, the page and the maid had finished their frolics before the period covered by "Byron," the last 12 years of the poet's life, a time in which he found celebrity, scandal, exile, and, finally, redemption and an odd sort of martyrdom. Confining the story to Byron's most eventful years makes narrative sense, but it also comes with another advantage: It allows this drama's creators to sidestep the inconvenient fact that a good number of Byron's earlier lovers were too young, and too male, to be altogether seemly in a romantic idol.

The BBC may be intent on selling the idea of "a poet who lived fast and died young," a James Dean with quill pen and social conscience, but the real Byron ignored convention in ways that made Dean seem like a bishop. He also had a predatory side difficult to reconcile with current notions of what a liberal hero should be. Fully told, Byron's exploits would make very uncomfortable viewing indeed - which is probably why the writers of this production don't try to do so.

What we get instead is a glittering, fast-paced, well-written, wonderfully acted, beautifully scored, and entertaining historical drama; classic BBC, in other words. As usual with such productions, its audience of diligent and studious viewers is, as it should be, rewarded with gratuitous sex, landscape, nudity, architecture, and gossip. Yes, yes, with the exception of some coy looks, dark remarks, and a make-out session on a Greek beach, Byron's boys are banned, but that still leaves a lush, pouting parade of noblewomen, prostitutes, bluestockings, and groupies to lift their skirts for the smoldering poet.

Then there are the three women who defined Byron's final years in England. These were the two (principal) mistresses: Augusta (Natasha Little), his (half) sister, who was, awkwardly, related to him and married to someone else (their first cousin, confusingly), and his "wild antelope," brilliant, crazy Lady Caroline Lamb (Camilla Power), a cross-dressing, vengeful psychotic who makes "Fatal Attraction's" Alexis seem like Sandra Dee. And, oh dear, oh dear, there was the Unsuitable Wife, the pious and mathematically gifted Annabella (Julie Cox), who wandered out of Jane Austen's orderly England into the mayhem of Byron's psyche and found herself seduced, sodomized, scandalized, and spurned by the man she so foolishly married.

Natasha Little and Camilla Power both turn in strong performances, but it is the delicately attractive Julie Cox's touching portrayal of the heartbroken Annabella that lingers. Finally, we should not, could not, forget Lady Melbourne, Caroline Lamb's cynical but entertaining mother-in-law, and, typically for this story, Annabella's aunt. Lady Melbourne was never Byron's lover (she was 60-something, and even he drew the line somewhere), but as his confidante, meddler, and provocateuse she is interpreted with brio and malice by an on-form Vanessa Redgrave inspired, quite clearly, by the badly behaved granny she plays on "Nip/Tuck."

As for the sun around which all those pretty planets revolved, old Rhyming Byron himself, Jonny Lee Miller does a terrific job in conveying the charm, neuroses, poses and danger of this extraordinary man. Sick Boy, it turns out, makes a remarkably convincing peer of the realm. If there are any weaknesses, they belong to the script. There are, sadly, few signs of the wit that could flash from those "fluent lips" (check out his letters to see just how funny Byron could be), and we are left with too little sense either of his poetry or of quite why he became the icon that he did. What's more, his brave, significant, and ultimately fatal intervention in Greece's war of independence is downplayed into a muddy, soggy fiasco.

Nevertheless, despite these (and other) historical lapses and all the Bowdlerizing, this enjoyable production is an excellent introduction to Lord Byron, and, as he might have said, that's not a bad way to spend an evening.