●●●●○
It’s all kicking off down in eighteenth-century Cornwall as historical fan favourite Poldark returns.
Warning: this review contains spoilers!
It’s been a mere eight months since Poldark was last on our screens, but roguish hero Ross and a cohort of eighteenth-century Cornwall’s finest do-gooding ruffians and black-hearted evildoers are back once more, thanks to the speedy commissioning of its third series. And lo, as its evocative theme tune and A-for-effort accents rang out, it felt like it had never even been away.
For the uninitiated, Poldark is the BBC’s second adaptation – this one penned by Debbie Horsfield – of the novel series of the same name by Winston Graham. Set against a backdrop of breath-taking cliffs, melodramatic dialogue and jaunty tricorn hats, it tells the story of Captain Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner), who returns from the American War of Independence to find his father dead, his fortune out of reach and his intended, Elizabeth (Heida Reed), engaged to someone else. Determined to make a living from his family’s lands, he sets out to resurrect his father’s mines with some occasional smuggling and shirtless scything thrown in on the side (alas, the ratio of onscreen mining to shirtlessness still weighs in mining’s favour, but there’s always hope). Along the way, he gets hitched to fiery, forthright Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) and faces the machinations of snooty, villainous George Warleggan (Jack Farthing).
Fast forward three series and it was all go in this opener: packed with more births, deaths and marriages than most series would deliver in a finale. Ross’ dubious tryst with Elizabeth rightly cost him Demelza’s trust and viewers’ sympathies last year, but the couple seem to have made an uneasy peace. The mine is ticking over and there’s no reason for him to see more military action, but his accountant should have known not to ask the fateful question ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ in the pub, for almost instantaneously the gleeful cackles of TV scriptwriters could be heard over the sound of crashing waves and clinking glasses.
Everyone was at pains to remind us that Elizabeth was a month away from giving birth, which naturally meant there’d be a new human onscreen by the end of the episode, while Ross and Demelza went into the wedding planning business as they arranged for painfully noble but essentially penniless Dr. Enys (Luke Norris, one of the series’ sterling, underrated supporting actors) to finally wed heiress Caroline Penvenen (Gabriella Wilde). This being Poldark, and let’s face it, Dwight being Dwight, however, their honeymoon – a mere twenty-four hours shore leave from the navy – was interrupted by the news that (surprise!) Elizabeth had gone into labour. She’d been forced to fake a ‘fall’ down some stairs because she was further along than she’d care to admit, as was obvious to pretty much everyone bar second husband George. I never thought I’d see the day where I almost wished for the return of the once-weedy Francis (Kyle Soller), who drowned tragically in the middle of his redemption arc, but that was before Elizabeth shacked up with Cornwall’s answer to Count Dracula.
As George added to his list of crimes by bestowing a name as unwieldy as ‘Valentine Warleggan’, his young stepson Geoffrey Charles – who seems to have aged about two and a half years in the time Elizabeth’s been pregnant – was the real surprise of the week. It appears he’s inherited an unexpected dose of backbone, giving a healthy bit of cheek to George (who wants to send him off to boarding school) while going for prohibited seaside strolls with new governess Morwenna (a doe-eyed Ellise Chappell). A visit to Uncle Ross culminated in a trip down the mines for family bonding over some good old-fashioned hard manual labour.
Demelza’s brutish father kicked the bucket, freeing up her brothers Sam (Tom York) and Drake (Harry Richardson) to head off on a Bible-bashing gap year, which will undoubtedly only take them as far as Truro and see them waylaid into nefarious shirtlessness. Caroline’s patrician, well-meaning uncle (John Nettles) also leaves the series, succumbing to illness just when his niece reached his bedside from a honeymoon growing more unlucky by the minute. Strong performances made relatively brief scenes feel longer and more poignant than a packed hour technically had time for. The tarot-reading Aunt Agatha (Caroline Blakiston) also deserves a mention, as she watched the foul seep of Warleggan blood into the traditional Poldark family pile with typical scorn. Oh, and heralded the curse of the black moon under which Valentine was born for good measure.
Joss Agnew’s direction was solid, if unremarkable, even downplaying the news that Demelza is up the duff (again). Cinematography was most notable, as Poldark’s visuals usually are, when showing off the windswept coast (much to the delight of Tourism Cornwall). This is series opener is an episode for tying up loose ends so as to tease new ones. It really was all about story – even though Ross himself didn’t get up to much save thatching a roof and doing some hearty, black-moon shrouded lurking – this opening effort was compelling without him being given the chance to make monumentally idiotic decisions. An effective return for what is, at its best, sweeping period drama.
