Like many of you, I was disappointed to learn that Aiden Turner got married recently. I really thought I might be in with a chance. If you’re not keeping tabs on his marital status or indeed are racking your brains trying to remember who he is, then let me jog your memory by saying ‘POLDARK’ and ‘SCYTHING’, and watch that give you a pleasing little frisson. Yes, Aiden looks good shirtless with a big tool in his hand, but that’s not why I love him. I enjoyed the Cornish smuggling shenanigans, rugged coastline, and Demelza’s hair, but for me Mr Turner’s charms as Ross Poldark are blunted rather than blade-sharp. His true lustworthiness is fully appreciable in one show and one show only: BBC Three’s Being Human.

Being Human was a great series about a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire in a houseshare, trying to live normal lives, and it was funny, dark and quite arousing. It starred Russell Tovey as a slightly whingey lycanthrope, and Leonora Critchlow as a vulnerable spook, but it was Aiden’s troubled vampire that did it for me. I think I might have a thing about the undead – they age really well, and I like pointed teeth. Aiden played John Mitchell, a sanguisuge tortured by his urges, who attempts to reject his own nature, much like Edward Cullen in Twilight, but waaaaay less dull. He had his natural Irish accent, which is wholly desirable, and occasionally he succumbed to his blood-lust and let rip, i.e. ripped people apart, reminding you that he was, like, really strong and deadly. Oooh, I think I might have swooned, exposing my neck.

Eagerly, I cultivated my Aiden-crush, watching him squeeze a horse with his thighs atop a windswept cliff as Captain Poldark, so when I noticed he was starring as Leonardo da Vinci in a new series, I thought, yes, I’ll have a piece of that. I imagined it would be utter schlock, but in a fun way, like The Tudors. No authenticity, but phwoargh. I know fuck all about da Vinci anyway, except that he drew some stuff and did maths and mirror writing. So bring on oil-splattered Aiden, wielding his big painting stick.

The series opens with Leonardo being carted off to jail – people in the 1400s were always being sent to prison or dunked. A cell is obviously a great opportunity for an artist to look through the bars at birds in the sky, like he’s yearning to paint them. When questioned about his relations with a certain Caterina da Cremona, he drifts off into a reverie, so we can flashback to find out why he’s been incarcerated in this high-handed manner.

‘14 years earlier’, and we’re in a Renaissance art school, where Leonardo is a humble student of the grouchy Verrocchio, an Alan Sugar figure on the lookout for up-and-coming talent to assist him. At first it seems Leo won’t make the grade, because he’s a weirdo perfectionist who wants to paint real people instead of imaginary gods, and would submit a blank page rather than lower himself. But then the Maestro gets stuck trying to work out how to winch a big golden ball on top of a church, and Leo secretly designs a nice pulley system for him. Soon he’s The Apprentice (cue Prokofiev), he and Verrocchio are great chums, the Duke of Milan is offering him a cushty job and it’s all groovy.

Leo’s muse is the beguiling Caterina, one of the art school models who has a mysterious scar and even more mysterious hair. When she first appeared, with glossy, hip-length tumbling ringlets, I assumed it was some sort of modelling wig, which she would later whip off to reveal an ordinary peasant-girl barnet. But she never did, so we must assume that despite being a penniless artists’ sitter, she has a stylist on hand to make sure no lock is ever out of place. Anyway, Leo is entranced by her and wants to paint her, but it turns out he does not want to have sex with her, so they have a ruckus as she’s understandably disappointed – he’s Poldark, FFS. At that point, I vaguely remembered that da Vinci was probably gay, which is hinted at because he looks at the Duke of Milan as if he’d like to see him scything in a field, and also wears very trendy skinny black Levis, despite living in 15th century Italy.

Leo should be pretty sexy because he can draw well and design awesome winches and we know he’s going to be really famous, but tbh he’s a bit of a dweeb. It’s a far cry from vampiric John Mitchell. The other problem is the show is absolute shite, which makes it even harder to fancy him. The dialogue is dire, embarrassingly expository, the acting perfunctory, and the sets give an absurdly sanitised view of the location and era. To cap it all, it turns out present-day Leonardo is in prison because he’s suspected of murdering Caterina. I had to look this bit up because I smelled bullshit, and it turned out IRL she wasn’t killed at all, and he barely knew her anyway. So they’ve just thrown in this erroneous murder mystery, and Freddie Highmore, aka Charlie Bucket in the second-best Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is there as a kind of Renaissance Columbo, trying to prove Leo’s guilt. It’s like they took a delicate da Vinci sketch and got a toddler to colour it in with crayons.

There’s a bit at the beginning of the first episode where Verrocchio takes one of his students to task, complaining that his work is inferior to a monkey throwing faeces at an easel. I don’t want to seem too harsh, but there’s a sense here that the scripts might have benefited from throwing a few more monkeys at those typewriters. My love for Aiden will live on, but my love for Leonardo drained away like blood from a vampire’s victim.

The real thing said that ‘where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art,’ and he was right. Clever bloke, da Vinci.

• Leonardo, 8 episodes, Amazon Prime