Any documentary about Francis Bacon has a tough job to do in having to match up to that glorious instalment of The South Bank Show, in which the great painter got steaming drunk at lunch with Melvyn Bragg. Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence (BBC Two) deserves great credit then for proving just as compulsive viewing as that earlier film.
When Bacon broke through in the 1940s, his dark figurative paintings were out of step with the abstract expressionism doing great business across the Atlantic. Yet slowly the dramatic and disturbing visions created by this self-taught genius captured the collective imagination and he took his place as one of the most vital artists of the 20th century.
