The Romantics (BBC2)

The Virgin Queen (BBC1)

HERE'S the latest incarnation of Doctor Who speaking the words of French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. And David Threlfall, who plays drunk and dishevelled Frank Gallagher in Shameless, reciting the work of British poet William Wordsworth.

The sight and sound of that pair pointed out that The Romantics, Peter Ackroyd's series about the creative movement in the 18th and 19th century, was never going to be some dry and dusty lecture. "I'm going to take you on a journey into the human imagination," he promised as blood red clouds filled the screen and the streets of Paris ran with blood.

All very different to the usual Saturday night TV fare of celebrities on ice and Stars In Their Eyes soundalikes. It won't have been to everyone's taste but the programme was feast for the eye and ear.

Ackroyd tramped around Europe recalling events of 200 years ago when the French were revolting (some will be unable to refrain from saying they still are) and the monarchy was falling (notably their heads from their bodies).

The impassive presenter told of the introduction of the guillotine in 1793 in in Paris. The first execution didn't go well as the blade became lodged in the fat neck of the victim. Never mind, second time lucky and heads did roll.

Along with gallons of blood, there was an outpouring of creativity as the thinkers, including Rousseau and Diderot, committed their thoughts to paper. The latter was arrested for writing an encyclopaedia, its words being judged tantamount to heresy and high treason.

Rousseau, meanwhile, believed that emotion could unlock the prison of civilised society, although it didn't seem very civilised to cut off the heads of the nobility. In America, the Declaration of Independence saw more revolution under way.

Soho in London became a haven for the free thinkers of Europe. Cue shot of Ackroyd lurking in a dimly-lit alleyway in modern day Soho, where services of a physical rather than psychological kind are offered these days.

Wordsworth took a trip to France - a literary booze cruise, you might say - and fell in love, married and had a daughter. "A child for a new age" as she was billed.

He returned home, minus his wife and daughter, to seek out new territory - a wild and unchartered landscape where he could be natural and himself. He and others like-minder writers, including Coleridge, gave politics a human face in their writing, succeeding where revolution failed.

The BBC's lavish new historical drama The Virgin Queen has a lot to overcome. Not just the memory of the recent Helen Mirren C4 series about Elizabeth I but the many other films, series and books about Good Queen Bess.

I'm not sure it succeeded in the first episode, which was lavishly produced, looked ravishing and Paula Milne's script efficiently took us through Elizabeth's imprisonment by sister Mary and her passion for young Dudley.

Despite a fine, feisty performance as Elizabeth from Anne-Marie Duff, alias Fiona from Shameless, this all seemed like a bad case of dj vu. This version doesn't appear, on the first episode, to have anything new to offer.

As others have said, surely there must be some other English monarchs with interesting stories that haven't been told so many times before. Just don't mention Henry VIII, another regal personage who's suffered from overexposure.