Keeping Up with Poldark: Series 3 Episode 3 – Review

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We’re a third of the way through the series; Ross is off being melodramatic in France while the rest of the Poldark crew get on with the real work of barn raising, beach running and bread making back home, writes Arianne Dunne.

 

It was all very tense and drawn-out for the first twenty minutes of this week’s Poldark. To the casual viewer it may have seemed unexciting (“he doesn’t do anything, he just sits there looking moody,” complained one such audience member, who had joined me for the evening and was busy nicking my dessert). But for old hands at this eighteenth century vagabond malarkey, it was a slow but surprisingly effective opening; for it was then that we knew that Ross Poldark would be taking a swing at someone by the end of the hour.

 

Navy bestie Dr. Dwight Enys (Luke Norris) was still missing in action off in revolutionary France, and Ross (Aidan Turner) had plied his smuggling contacts for a nifty spying trip to the coast. What seemed like several days’ worth of card games and shifty glances with hook-handed sea dog Tholly Tregirls (Sean Gilder) in a dusty French pub was enough to see Ross – who has never been known to sit still for more than forty-eight seconds at a time – just itching to do something stupid and reckless. So naturally he wound up getting captured, questioned, caught bribing an official and deported, all before swan-diving off a ship to go back after said banishment, risking death at the hands of some guillotine-happy Jacobins and serious bedhead from sleeping in a haystack.

 

Back in Cornwall, there was more agonising over the menfolk’s fate (though what looked like a mini-break for everyone else was more like several months for Demelza’s baby bump) before Demelza remembered she is an absolute BAMF who can do whatever she wants and worked through her feelings with some cathartic bread-flinging (“T’int right, t’int fit, t’int fair, t’int proper,” she and Prudie said in a fantastic back-and-forth, one of the best scenes in the episode). “He’ll regret ever sending home his hat for it won’t fit his head when I’m done with him.”

 

 

Sam (Tom York) and Drake (Harry Richardson) were off to a Methodist barn raising, having been gifted a derelict storehouse by their sister in her husband’s absence. In some of the most beautiful and windswept scenes of the series so far (the episode was directed by Doctor Who and Tarzan alum Stephen Woolfenden, with cinematography by the award-winning Cinders Forshaw), the less religious Drake was much happier on the beach. Mostly because shy governess Morwenna and everyone’s favourite child wingman Geoffrey Charles were there, having adventures and doing things their family would disapprove of, like having fun and smiling. This particular clutch of new characters are yet to be put through the ringer, but I can’t help feeling fond of our little sandy trio.

 

Luckily, being made a corrupt and preening magistrate meant the detestable George (Jack Farthing) was too occupied to notice the sound of joy within a twenty mile radius, while Elizabeth (Heida Reed) was on the laudanum, which is basically the historical equivalent of a horse tranquiliser. And little wonder, what with her being stuck wed to a dastardly Warleggan. There was one moment where she seemed startlingly awake, though, as she and George discovered an unexpected bedroom kink which led to what can only be described as making out. Unfortunately, that kink was a shared desire to plot Ross’ downfall. Mind you, George was probably born with a collar buttoned up to his Adam’s apple, so it was still left to Ross and Demelza’s one-to-one scenes to provide the more emotional core of the series. Turner and Tomlinson do solid work, with sometimes hammy dialogue, to carry the show and make its central relationship believable.

 

When Elizabeth and George are ‘removed to the townhouse in Truro’, it was possibly the best thing that’s ever happened at crumbling countryside manor Trenwith. Morwenna and Geoffrey Charles immediately started making plans for a house party (or the nearest historically accurate alternative, like swinging from a chandelier without a dinner jacket or sliding down the stairs on a portrait). Even Aunt Agatha, who must be at least a hundred at this stage, had a spring in her step. Maybe Morwenna really will get to invite the bae round for a bit of Netflix and chill before her cousins return.

 

Of course, if this is all sounding suspiciously cheery for Poldark, then we still had poor Dwight to return to. He’s still alive (obviously, it’s only episode three) in an upcycled monastery-turned-prison in France. The good doctor had grown a beard worthy of a tattooed homebrewing hipster and a pessimistic streak worthy of a final year philosophy student. But never fear, Ross was building up to storm in, sweep our favourite secondary lead off his feet and rescue him from the perils of shouty Frenchmen, right?

 

Sadly, no. Ross risked his life, gave half a squadron of guards black eyes and put Demelza through the ringer not for his best mate, but for… a bit of paper with his name on it? I’d been unable to tear my eyes from the screen for most of the hour, but Poldark’s third episode failed to make its stakes match its acts of derring-do. Gabriella Wilde’s Caroline may have collapsed with relief on seeing this evidence of Dwight’s survival, but it was a bit of an anticlimax. Poldark is evidently going to extend the inevitable rescue of Dr. Enys as much as it can, but in the meantime I think I’m going to need another dessert.

 

Watch Poldark weekly, every Sunday evening, on BBC and stay caught up with the Tn2 fandom right here with Arianne Dunne.

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