Emmy Woodhouse I did not know much about Byron before seeing this BBC production with Jonny Lee Miller as Byron. I watched it with a university professor who teaches Byron and who is quite difficult to please when it comes to such productions. We were both nailed right to the end and didn't find anything in the film either superfluous, clumsy or inaccurate. For such a short adaptation, it covered the most essential side of Byron's character without judging the man. The casting was perfect and Jonny Lee Miller's performance was marvellous. His beautiful face had the innocence and yet his diction carried the weight of Byron's all time cynicism and detachment to all things " innocent". I highly recommend everyone to see this film, because, I for one have since plunged myself into reading Byron and Shelly thanks to the compelling way in which Jonny Lee Miller portrayed Byron. This was infinitely more enjoyable and ultimately more useful for a non literary person such as myself than several documentaries I had seen of Byron previously. I only wish the film had been longer with some mention of Byron's extraordinary involvement with Armenia and Armenian language as well.After all, the adequate way of judging such a film is by how much it influences one in instructing oneself further on the subject or how one's own preconceived views are put into question. That is precisely what this film did to me.

Boris-57 OK OK, it might be hard to put the entirety of a man's life in one film. Traditionally therefore, biopics focus on one or two significant parts in the subject's life. Now, Byron was a "my week beats your year" fellow, which makes selecting parts that are representative even harder. Furthermore, just as Byron's poetry is inseparable from his life, the man's life itself must be seen as a whole. Lifting parts out is not only not showing the whole picture, it's showing a different picture altogether.Now, in short my review comes down to this: supposedly, Byron was indeed the "my week beats your year" prototype, a guy who lived so intensely that he indeed did more in his 15 or so active years than most do in an entire lifetime. True, he had setbacks and was a victim of the time and social setting he lived in - but in the end, this dude is supposed to be the prototype whose life we'd all want to lead, no? Well, I did NOT, at ANY moment, want to live the life depicted in this film. So it gets 3. Not for being so badly done (which, direction-wise, it more or less was), but more importantly for missing the point entirely in a flat plot.Some more detail. Well, to over simplify things, a Byron bio should have two distinct episodes: 1. Post-first Europe trip: England and his rise to fame + marriage / 2. His life abroad. Now, the important thing is that the SECOND part should be at least as important as the first. Not only was it a lot longer, but the most significant change in Byron took place then. Furthermore, it's where he created his best works (Don Juan, the Vision of Judgement etc. - all the stuff that makes him *really* unique in English literature).Instead, in this film (a) Byron's life never comes across as even remotely entertaining, (b) it only gets *worse* after he leaves England. They did two good jobs: first, they started at his return of his Europe trip (though a bit more of the actual trip would have been welcome as a prologue), second, they chose an angle, and they chose his incestuous love for Augusta (who is rather perfectly cast). The problem with this last thing is that they never let it go. True, Byron remained strongly attached to Augusta for the rest of his life, but, especially as he was such a mood swing person, the fact that his letters reflect that does not mean that at other times he might not have completely enjoyed life.Anyway, the first part of the TV film should have ended with him leaving England. There's no doubt about that. The thing is: once abroad, a life of debauchery began (with the infamous Geneva period), but in Italy Byron also discovered a new life, both for his poetry (inspired by Italian comedy), already in Venice, and for himself when he found the Contessa Teresa Guiccioli and moved to Ravenna (afterwards, at the request of Shelly, with Teresa, to Pisa). In other words, he was also *liberated*. His mind and life opened up (and not only in the decadent sense), while England's closed further as it fell into the gravitational pull of the Victorian age. True, freedom was Augusta-less, but this bitter-sweet freedom tastes sour in this film. We see a lonely, bored snob getting older.I mean, hell, Byron never thought much about his poetry, except when he finally found his own voice in Don Juan! Apart from poetic and romantic developments, his relationship with Shelly (and the down-break) should have been more documented. Also, it is in Italy in Ravenna that he gets involved with politics and revolutionary ideas. This is important, as it shows that the decadent romantic and ultimately escapist language and person of Childe Harold is changing into the more planted-in-life realistic and lighter passion of the language and person of Don Juan. Life and work are one. True, still a bit naive, but it's what got him to Greece! And the whole thing came full circle in Pisa, where Shelley's revolutionary spirit further ignited the spark. Missolonghi wasn't the bored snob suddenly looking for some action. It was the insights in Italy (the Gambas) stirring him into action. It can be a symbol for the man looking for some ancient-style battle excitement while the rest of Europe becomes fixed in the clay of modern reason and conservatism. But it wasn't just that, there was a true inspiration behind it. Meanwhile, Byron wrote massive amounts of Don Juan. True, his end is a bit sad, but it's not like he's worn out. THAT is the essence of Byron's life: he may have had some strong emotional attachments (2: Augusta and Teresa), but EVERY time he managed to reinvent himself truly. Meaning that he wasn't 'less' at the end of his life - no, he'd made a physical and mental JOURNEY that, at the time, few people were prepared to make.I wonder. Why is it that so often the second period in Byron's life is overlooked? Because it had less obvious conflicts, as the man was finally coming to his own? In focusing our attention on the frustrated England years fraught with scandals, we show ourselves to be not much better than the English aristocracy at the time, which Byron so despised, and which, despite the fact that he had no choice, he *willingly* fled in 1816, to find a world that was modern and liberal enough to let him find the voice that would make him the first romantic plainspoken language poet and evolve from a self-obsessed snob to a passionate man moving onward with a cause.

benbrae76 I've always been enthusiastic about period dramas, an art form in which the BBC has excelled in the past. This presentation of "Byron" was unbelievable. Unbelievably bad! The script was dreadful, the acting uninspired, and all the characters woefully insipid. Apparently Byron was "mad bad and dangerous to know", and set the ladies hearts all-a-flutter. Not in this production. Here he appeared as a tawdry jumped-up little squirt instead of a passionate hero of womenfolk and the catalyst for the Greek struggle for independence. Being born with a club-foot Byron walked with a limp. This portrayal of the man was just limp all over.Byron was in reality an arrogant, cruel, egocentric, sexual (actually bisexual) predator, and although handsome and obviously attractive to women, in my opinion a generally loathsome creature who thought nothing of the tears of others he abandoned, both the women who loved him and whom he mostly abused, and his children. He has been dubbed by some as the ultimate romantic. I find nothing remotely romantic about him. He led a debauched, drunken, chaotic life in the mode of many modern-day pop and film "stars", who have equally misguided beliefs of their own importance, of being do-gooders and/or of being some sort of fighter for the underdog. I haven't much time for those similarly irresponsible idiots either. Byron didn't even see any heroic action in Greece, but died a distinctly nasty unheroic death there, caused mainly by incompetent doctors, and I for one think he deserved it. However somehow he became a catalyst for future action for Greek independence. Lord knows why or how! Thankfully Byron's early death spared us of more of his dreary, hypocritical, and over-revered poetry, and probably saved more women of ignoble treatment at his hands. I watched the whole two and a half-hours waiting for the production of "Byron" to spark into life. Not a splutter, not even a glimmer. It was utter tedium, if not downright boredom, from start to finish. In my opinion Byron's works should be flung on the back burner, and this dramatisation of his life should be accorded the same treatment. However I do realise I'll probably be in the minority with my opinions. C'est la vie! I think the BBC lost its nous with this one. Although I detest the man and his works, with a little more effort and research, the production team could have brought him to life, but they didn't even come close to showing the deplorable excuse for a man that was the real Byron.

Ginger Johnson Let me start by stating that I've read most of Byron's letters, a number of biographies as well as his poetry. The screenwriter, whose work on adapting Persuasion I liked very much, did well by the conflicted, contradictory character of the "bad, mad and dangerous to know" Byron. The script drew on the title characters own works, letting him speak what he wrote - and he was a marvelous letter writer, much better than he was a poet. This film was much more faithful to the facts than the average biopic - frighteningly so, given what it shows about Byron's scandalous character and life.Jonny Lee Miller, although obviously older than the character he portrays, gives us the whole chameleon, the demure new star in the writing establishment, the would be politician, the society "bad boy". Witness the poet with his hair up in curlers for a new side to the Byron everyone thinks they know. My ideal actor for the part would have been the young Robert Vaughn, but Miller gives us the genuine pain in the ass quality the part needs.What particularly interested me in this version was what got left out. Probably the most famous part of the Byron story is the summer he spent with Shelley and his menage, which resulted in the publication of "Frankenstein." It has been amply treated elsewhere, in the excellent "Bride of Frankenstein," Ken Russell's god-awful "Gothic", and the even worse "Haunted Summer". The screenwriters chose to leave it out, concentrating instead on the debacle of Byron's marriage and his final redeeming attempt to assist the cause of Greek liberation from the Turks.In between these two was the other major part of Byron's life, the many years he spent in Italy. While the scandalous parts were shown, it might have been interesting to show something of his attempts to help liberate Italy from the Austrians, which led him ultimately to his death in Greece.Overall, though, I found this movie an absorbing account of a life ill-spent, full of fine acting in all the minor parts. I'm not sure, however, exactly how it would work to someone without a basic knowledge of the Byron saga, in all its deplorable, lunatic, and muddled variety. The life of Byron simply doesn't lend itself to smooth storytelling with a lot of sexy bits.