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Batten down the hatches, saddle up your finest horse and set your tricorn hats to an angle: it’s that Poldark time of year again. Ross (Aidan Turner) always knows how to make an entrance – whether it’s coming back from the dead to ruin family dinner or swanning into palatial country houses having barely combed his hair – and the first moments of this hour-long opener are no different, as he swims – SWIMS! – across the screen. Maybe Aidan Turner really is preparing a James Bond audition tape: his sea-drenched walk out of the waves practically constitutes a Daniel Craig cameo.
It’s hard to describe just how precisely series four of the BBC’s hit historical drama picks up where series three left off. It’s implied that some time has passed – baby Clowance Poldark has a full head of hair and some brand-new fine motor skills, for a start. But otherwise, they may as well have titled this series premiere ‘Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor’. The villainous George Warleggan (Jack Farthing) has schemed his way into Parliament, though his lordly benefactor, like everyone else, doesn’t actually seem to like him. Doe-eyed Morwenna (Ellise Chappell) is trapped in the vicarage by her marriage to the odious Reverend Whitworth (Christian Brassington). Caroline (Gabriella Wilde) and Dwight (Luke North) were typically underserved in terms of things to do, but they did for once have some apparent good news. It’s also worth noting that Dr. Dwight “dogs are not meant to be carried” Enys is now more in love with Horace the pug than anybody else on this show.
Elsewhere in 1790s Cornwall, fiery-haired leading lady Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) is still grappling with the ramifications of her windswept beach tryst with dishy, slightly bland Lieutenant Armitage (Josh Whitehouse). The latter’s diagnosis of “will go blind in six months” has miraculously turned into some unknown but sight-giving bodily malady. Of course, writer Debbie Horsfield would never use such an alteration to kill him off within, oh, the next three episodes. Would she…?
Things looked even more dangerous for Demelza’s brothers Sam (Tom York) and Drake (Harry Richardson), as they got caught up in a grain riot with the troublemaking Jago Martin, son of newly-greying series stalwart Zacky Martin (Tristan Sturrock). Hauled up in front of the magistrate (our villain, George Warleggan), all three were sentenced to death by hanging. This is where a recent rewatch of series three comes in handy – I’d all but forgotten George’s campaign to make the lives of the Carne brothers a misery. This plot had intensity and peril, yet it was where I most felt that this episode could have been the missing tenth installment of the previous series. It would have given the already high stakes an extra risky season-finale edge, and ended the series not on Demelza’s unresolved adultery, but on a gripping sense of drama.
Still, Harry Richardson in particular is to be commended for reminding us just how young Drake is. This isn’t even the first time Drake has been arrested, but his jaunty hat and chipper walk gave way to the face and demeanour of a boy in over his head, sleeping in a prison cell next to his big brother. A return to his dopey love story with Morwenna soon, please.
