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Poldark review: Shades of panto, but this Melrose Place with muskets is a blast

With Warleggan closing in, the frisson between Ross and Elizabeth surely must be either acknowledged or put to bed (so to speak) forever.

Karl Quinn

I really, really enjoy Poldark (ABC, Sunday 8.30pm) but there are times when it veers awfully close to pantomime. 

Take the moment two weeks ago when the villain of the piece, George Warleggan (Jack Farthing), and his even more villainous uncle Cary (Pip Torrens) were yet again denied their druthers. Thanks to the aid of a mystery benefactor, our super-sexy hero Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) was able to settle his crippling debts just in the nick of time, thus avoiding debtors' prison.

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Trailer: Poldark (Season 2, Spisode 8)

Ross Poldark returns home after the American Revolutionary War and rebuilds his life with a new business venture, making new enemies and finding a new love where he least expects it.

"How," fumed Cary Warleggan. "How has he managed this?" He might as well have seethed "drats, foiled again".

Or take last week's encounter with the grizzled digger Mark Daniel in a tavern on the Scilly Isles, with his promises of riches untold in Poldark's supposedly tapped-out copper mine. "Thar be foin quartzy rock and gossan," he said. "Oi wager thar'd be a mint o' money in tha' place alone."

Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) and his wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson).
Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) and his wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson). Photo: ABC TV

Why the props people didn't stick a big black X on the map Poldark and co had unfurled before them is a mystery. But they are to be commended for their masterful use of the glue that kept the fake beard on Daniel's face, and for resisting the temptation to stick a parrot on his shoulder.

Granted, no one ever says "Look out, he's behind you" in Poldark, but my goodness they come close.

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In truth this slightly campy aspect is one of the things that makes the show so enjoyable. It's never completely over the top, but when an Aunt Agatha (Caroline Blakison) splutters out "fiddlesticks!" or tilts her chin upwards at a snooty angle, we know we're in the presence of a fine aged ham.

I love the accents, too – oi rackon it's fine 'ard to top a Cornish twang for musicality or comic effect – and of course there's the scenery: who could ever tire of those stone buildings and cobbled streets running to the sea, of horses being ridden hard along the wide sweep of a beach, of a stately manor shrouded in morning mist, of a billowing cape and a tri-cornered hat in silhouette against the crashing surf?

Poldark has never quite shaken his feelings for his first love, Elizabeth (Heida Reed).
Poldark has never quite shaken his feelings for his first love, Elizabeth (Heida Reed). Photo: ABC

But what really sustains Poldark is the characters, and the interweaving relationships between them. This is a tight little community, more or less hermetically sealed from the world beyond, with love lives, economics and social conventions all bound together in a tiny patch of Cornwall. It's a soapie with period costumes, a Melrose Place with muskets.

I love that our hero looks so much like Neil Diamond c1970, too; when the good doctor Dwight Enys (Luke Norris) healed that girl with the "limpsy leg", Rosina, it felt like a missed opportunity. Poldark might have ridden up to her on his mare, leant down with an outstretched arm and said, "Cracklin' Rosie get on board…"

Aidan Turner when he was Neil Diamond, circa 1970.
Aidan Turner when he was Neil Diamond, circa 1970. 

It's a man's world, but it's women who really make Poldark's wheels spin – specifically his earthy wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) and the woman he had intended to marry until war got in the way, the upper-crust Elizabeth (Heida Reed).

There's always been a good dash of unresolved sexual tension between Ross and Elizabeth, but with her husband (and his cousin) Francis having drowned in the mine, and with Warleggan closing in on the beautiful but near-penniless widow, the URST is set to burst. This week, it fairly does.

Aidan Turner seems to channel the moody magnificence of the Cornish coast.
Aidan Turner seems to channel the moody magnificence of the Cornish coast. 

This is a tale about the way things used to be – the last gasp of the aristocracy, the rise of industry, the spread of democracy – and for all his virtues, Poldark is no feminist. Demelza is a feisty, resourceful woman, but that's not necessarily to her credit in his eyes. Elizabeth's uselessness, on the other hand, he finds immensely appealing. "She's a miner's daughter, she has learnt to survive," he says of his wife. "Elizabeth is a gentlewoman."

Now we'll see the lengths to which Poldark will go in order to save such a helpless creature. In its small way it's rather shocking. It's fair to say this is one scene you'd be unlikely to find in a panto.

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin

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