James Walton

Poldark review: drama by committee

Plus: BBC2’s new sitcom, Nurse, suggests that Paul Whitehouse is a bit of a genius

(BBC Pictures) 
issue 14 March 2015

By my calculations, the remake of Poldark (BBC1, Sunday) is the first time BBC drama has returned to Cornwall since that famously mumbling Jamaica Inn — which may explain why even the lowliest yokel here tends to project from the diaphragm. Leading both the cast and the diaphragm-projection is Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark, initially seen as a British Redcoat in a wood rather unconvincingly captioned ‘Virginia, America, 1781’. The short scene that followed efficiently established that he had a rackety past and some politically radical ideas, before the American rebels attacked, leaving several extras dead. Ross himself suffered injuries bad enough to bring on a severe case of flashback, as he deliriously remembered how he and a wild-haired woman used to run about the Cornish cliffs in slow motion while laughing a lot and swearing eternal love.

And with that, we cut to Cornwall two years later, where Ross’s homecoming wasn’t going terribly well — what with his father being dead, the family estate bankrupt, the family tin mines flooded and that wild-haired woman not only immaculately coiffured, but also engaged to somebody else in the belief that Ross was dead.

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