Never knowingly understated

At one uncharacteristically low-key point in Sunday’s Poldark — back for a third series on BBC1 — Ross (Aidan Turner) left off the brooding and cliff-top galloping for a while to review his finances. They were, his genial banker Harris Pascoe told him, in good shape. Hearing that Ross’s marriage was going through one of its happier phases too, Harris then turned even more reassuring. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ he concluded with a cheerful smile.

Which just goes to show that Harris Pascoe must never have seen Poldark — because the answer to his question was, of course, ‘Almost everything’. Ross’s wife Demelza could, for example, be summoned, along with her cleavage, to attend her estranged father who lay in bed dying — or ‘a-dying’ as she duly preferred to call it. Ross could also arrange a secret marriage between Caroline Penvenen and Dr Enys, only for both to be dramatically called away on their wedding night: she, to her beloved guardian who was doing some a-dying himself; he, to help Elizabeth Warleggan deliver a baby that we and Ross know is Ross’s rather than horrible husband George’s.