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."
