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Can an art-school trio of mid-19th-century rounders make for sexy and compelling viewing? If the trio is the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of the smashing British series Desperate Romantics, the answer is a resounding yes. Desperate Romantics focuses on the real-life art students John Millais (Samuel Barnett), Dante Gabriel Rosetti (the charismatic British TV star Aidan Turner), and William Holman Hunt (Rafe Spall, son of the great actor Timothy Spall), who shocked the art world of 1840s London and the Royal Academy of Art by rejecting the staid style of the day and championing the Pre-Raphaelite style of realism and Christian symbolism in their painting. If to modern ears that doesn't sound particularly shocking, Desperate Romantics paints a compelling portrait of these artists as the rock 'n' rollers of their era, perhaps even the punk movement. They're insolent, self-absorbed, randy, and dismissive of the current Zeitgeist--though still insecure enough to want the blessing of influential critic John Ruskin (played by the splendid Tom Hollander) and annoyed by the judgmental tone taken by prominent novelist Charles Dickens (the equally splendid Mark Heap). The storytelling is based on enough fact to immerse the viewer into the world completely--yet takes enough license to spice up the tale with revenge, duels, and plenty of sex. To say that Desperate Romantics is "bawdy" doesn't explain the half of it; there's more nudity and sex in these six TV episodes than in most R-rated feature films. Yet the sex is part of the appeal of Desperate Romantics--the series is with sumptuous cinematography and suggests that the insatiable appetites of the three Pre-Raphaelite "brothers" went a long way toward shaping their radical, influential artistic view. "Where is the life?! The blood?!" shrieks Millais in the middle of a hushed art exhibition. Fans of British period dramas, art history, and bedroom farces will find plenty to keep them occupied in Desperate Romantics. The set also includes an interview with Franny Moyle, author of the historical fiction book upon which the series is based, and a short featurette on 19th-century England. --A.T. Hurley