I'll definitely have to check out "Ripper Street", it sounds like just the kind of show I've been looking for.
As for "The Following", I watched the first two episodes and your short review got it spot on. And amidst all blatantly wrong drivel, everyone was referring to Poe as "Romantic". According to the encyclopaedia, Poe was indeed writing at the end of the Romantic period, but to me he's always felt like the beginning of Victorian writing, and not the End of Romanticism -- where are the lengthy nature metaphors? the constant references to Graeco-Roman religion? Of course, there's a preoccupation with death, but in Poe it's someone else's death, and in our Romantic writers it's the death of the author/narrator. Not to mention that Poe is gruesome, and Romanticism is anything but.
I'm sure the point could be argued, but if you ask me Poe does not belong in the same slot as Keats and Shelley.
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As for "The Following", I watched the first two episodes and your short review got it spot on. And amidst all blatantly wrong drivel, everyone was referring to Poe as "Romantic". According to the encyclopaedia, Poe was indeed writing at the end of the Romantic period, but to me he's always felt like the beginning of Victorian writing, and not the End of Romanticism -- where are the lengthy nature metaphors? the constant references to Graeco-Roman religion? Of course, there's a preoccupation with death, but in Poe it's someone else's death, and in our Romantic writers it's the death of the author/narrator. Not to mention that Poe is gruesome, and Romanticism is anything but.
I'm sure the point could be argued, but if you ask me Poe does not belong in the same slot as Keats and Shelley.