Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark (Episode 1, after prologue)
Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza singing (also Episode 1)
Of course there has to be an end. Of course. For that is what everyone has faced since the world began. And that is — what do you call it — intolerable. It’s intolerable! So you must not think of it. You must not face it. Because it is a certainty it has to be forgotten. One cannot — one must not — fear a certainty. All we know is this moment and this moment. Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come does not exist yet. That’s tomorrow! it’s only now that can ever be, at any one moment, now, we are alive — and together. We can’t ask more. There isn’t any more to ask — Demelza to Ross, concluding words of The Angry Tide, almost the last words of the 1977 iteration but not forcefully enough spoken by Angharad Rees)
Friends and readers,
So we have come, alas, to the end of a second iteration of the first seven marvelous Poldark novels of Winston Graham, with Debbie Horsfield transmuting the tragic and stoic pain of the (by no means) darkest of these novels, The Angry Tide, into hope for compromise and renewal (two of our couples, Ross and Demelza Poldark, Dwight and Caroline Enys); healing after the self has been shattered it would seem beyond repair (Drake and now Morwenna Carne); and maddened rage turned into a stone-y acceptance (as George Warleggan stands over the grave of Elizabeth with two of her children in tow, Valentine and Ursula).
Jack Farthing as George Warleggan (the last shot)
We’ve had four years rather than two, and hour long rather than 45-50 minute episodes. One script writer instead of seven. The last two episodes of this iteration were as powerful as found anywhere in contemporary TV drama. It took time for me to recover after both. When I did, I felt sorrow that Turner could not find his way to live in this role for another say three years (which it might have taken for the concluding quartet, Stranger from the Sea, Miller’s Dance, Loving Cup, Twisted Sword; and coda, Bella (Graham originally named it far more appropriately Valentine).
Duelling scene: establishment shot
When seen against the backdrop of the last half of The Four Swans and The Angry Tide (Poldark 6 & 7, the two novels adapted), and the corresponding episodes of the 1977-78 Poldark (Episodes 8-13, scripted by Alexander Baron, John Wiles and Martin Worth), one is driven to same kinds of conclusions as the previous three seasons.
Judy Geeson a much more deeply felt Caroline in the 1977 episodes (Part 10).
At its best the new Poldark provided much much more closely literal transposition; they were much more willing to show the characters deeply disquieted, angry, vexed at one another. Horsfield repeatedly focused on intense vulnerable and angry (and all sorts of) psychological encounters, up-close, up front in ways not quite permitted by the decorum of the 1970s BBC costume dramas. To this was added Ross’s rousing protest against the hanging of innocent and starving men as “examples” (“pour encourager les autres,” as Voltaire famously wrote in Candide), scenes of explicit radical political proposals by Ross in parliament (hinted at in the books and omitted in the 1970s), rousing radical political proposals by Ross in parliament (anachronistically standing on the wrong side of aisle, as otherwise how could he have been protesting against the Tory party as he represents the Tory grandee Boscawen, Lord Falmouth). There was some stunningly memorable photography around the scene of the duel: the landscape seems to go from dissolve to water and back again. Some fine virtuoso acting, showing the BBC still has this in its pocket if it will only give the actors the nuanced lines and the time: it would be invidious to single any one out, but the particularly hard and poignant role of Morwenna was more or less fully realized by Elise Chappell (she was a bit hampered by the determination of Horsfield to squash Graham’s Morwenna’s revulsion against the reincarnation of the man who nightly rapes her sadistically; that is to say, the baby forced on her by Whitworth).
And it’s not that easy to be as purely obnoxious and contemptible while actuated by genuine predatory power as Christian Brassington managed in the thankless role of complacently incessantly corrupt vicious Vicar Whitworth. Robin Ellis appeared a couple of times this season as a slightly softened Rev Halse who condescends to hint to Ross some good advice, and he was joined by another “old-timer” bought back to lend some subtlety to the proceedings: as Sir John Mitford, Adrian Lukis (Wickham in the famed 1995 P&P scripted Andrew Davies), lets George know that his power as a magistrate to arrest someone is not going to be taken over on behalf of George’s personal vendetta.
I felt repeatedly a good feeling engendered across sequences of scenes as the actors now comfortable in their roles and doing (in the fiction) positive useful work together, socializing back in Cornwall. (Socializing in London is presented as in the book something hollow, hypocritical, dysfunctional if the aim were really friendships or building relationships). Good feeling in Episode 3 with the back-and-forth of over-voice for letters between Demelza reporting to Ross how things are going and a very different life from that in London, from which he confiding in her, his voice over turning into flashback vivid scenes. Episode 5 had effective structure, with the unexpected manslaughter of Whitworth, and then the anguished turnaround of Drake (Harry Richardson) from the girl Demelza and his brother, Sam, have engineered him into promising to marry (Rosina) and his feeling of coming promising joy, security, a peaceful existence. Almost immediately he turns back to the now abused grieving girl he has loved so deep he cannot divest himself of a need to protect her, to be with her as his comfort too. They understand one another intuitively. Then the interlace of cruel destructiveness on the part of the ever seething villain George Warleggan sending the monster Harry and the girl’s father to destroy Drake’s forge desolating.
Harry Richardson as Drake seeking Morwenna along the cliff
The home we see he had prepared for himself and Rosina destroyed (Episode 5)
Emma’s return to tell Sam she will marry someone else is full of empathy. She loves him and he her, but his religion is a barrier they will not be able to get past. She will not be accepted by his flock; he will not be able to understand her and she cannot spend her life pretending. She enjoys the more vulgar, coarse man.
At its worst was again shameless fetishizing of Aidan Turner (the prologue to episode 1 was grotesque). As in previous seasons what had been in the books handled in a naturalistic probable way became contrived improbable and melodrama, e.g. in the first episode Drake and Sam Carne wholly innocent of any wrong-doing come close to being hung. Horsfield seems wholly out of sympathy with or cannot understand the development of the character of Demelza as realized across the books. Demelza does not have an affair with Hugh Armitage to revenge herself on or triumph over Ross, or to show power. Eleanor Tomlinson repeated this explanation, suggesting she had not read the books or thought about what adultery means even today. When Ross first married Demelza, it was not after a romantic courtship between equals, but as his servant that he had come to like and be dependent on, but someone also decidedly beneath him, younger than him; Armitage was her first introduction to romance, to poetry. Horsfield has Demelza bicker and Ross become abject (wholly out of character). Horsfield also has Demelza, Demelza (!) inform Drake just before he is to wed Rosina that Whitworth is dead and Morwenna supposedly free. That’s the last thing Demelza would do. She has done everything to bring it about. In this episode he asks Demelza why did she tell him? Good question. In the book he hears from someone else, and himself first tells Rosina and while hurt, she forgives him. Horsfield has Demelza say that she had to tell Drake or he’d have never forgiven her! Who is Demelza considering here? But Drake reproaches this new Demelza, which has the effect of ripping him open again — and so he is until the 8th episode when finally Morwenna freed (by the luck of a miscarriage) comes to him.
This last season was also reduced, made so much shallower by the continual presentation of George as an almost one-dimensional villain, the hater of Ross, with his uncle Cary as a chuckling minor devil. I wish too that Horsfield had not (as the previous Poldark series did) blackened the character of Elizabeth. In the 1970s Jill Townseend was ambitious and of course therefore cold; this time Heida Reed exults in George’s amoral tricks, looking unconcerned on who he hurt. Thus if it was (and I suspect this is so) that Horsfield wanted us to see Elizabeth as wishing her death (as Horsfield has her taking laudanum drops to endure her), she makes it hard for the viewer to feel the pity of the demise of a just and intelligent if conventional woman.
Heida Reed by her mirror contemplating herself and the drug Dr Anselm has given her to bring on early parturition
Still I am among those who wrote to Macmillan saying that if they were to print the scripts from the third and fourth season, I would be eager to buy them. There is much richness and care in this season and my guess is that as with the first two season (where the scripts were published), the script had more potential than was realized. The scripts can help the viewer get past the brevity of the scenes in the actual film which go far more swiftly than reading them does and the continual switch-back-forth is not as distracting.
Was there anything significantly different about this year’s episodes and those of the previous. It seemed to me that Turner had become so comfortable in this role of truly moral hero that at moment he provided a coda to scenes of anguish: as in the previous seasons, Horsfield is not willing to allow any other character to be the one who won out in catastrophe. So in the book it’s Sam who rescues most of the people from a mine flood; here we had to have Ross in the scene; in the book, it’s Drake who flies to retrieve Morwenna from Trenwith and Warleggan; here we had to have Ross come first. Here we have Ross trying to intervene to help Dwight live with whatever grief he has. The eighteenth century liked an exemplary hero who was a strong, good, earnestly emotional man.
Robin Ellis as Ross not invited to the party, the outsider — he was not the same kind of exemplary figure, but far more elusive, look at his steely eyes behind which we sense pain from simply enduring existence on the terms it’s offered
In this scene Monk Adderley snidely takes Ross for a threadbare troubadour (1977 Poldark) — a shallow back-biter
The last three episodes of both Poldarks (1977, 11-13; 2018, 6-8), both taken from the concluding third The Angry Tide can be aligned. Episode 11 (1977) and 6 (2018) both realize the lavish party George throws in Cornwall as a prelude to his coming career in Parliament and in both the socipathic murderer, Monk Adderley (Malcolm Tierney in 1977; Max Bennett, 2018, both uncannily mocking evil) meets Ross talking to Elizabeth in the garden. Alignment as in the previous years show how much has been lost of detailed novelistic complexity in the dramaturgies of the new era where so many events of different types are piled in within an hour when the older dramaturgy actors could develop a single scene a length. The older series took such time to dramatize the ball; while the new one twists and turns over scene after scene with lighthening speed so we can’t savor the build=up to George’s sudden fury and are to ball back on quick shots of the ravaged face of Elizabeth once Geoffrey Charles has pronounced his half-brother, Valentine, as the “spittin’ image of Uncle Ross,” and George has shut her and Valentine out again.
One flaw in the final ending: far too much emphasis was given to Ross’s relationship with Elizabeth as the central thread of the whole series, by going back to the initial prologue of the first episode of the first season. The invented flashback scene to 1780 in the last episode had the effect of giving us time’s perspective and how things turned out so unexpectedly (the one man Elizabeth didn’t marry was Ross) but we are asked to use this material to reduce all that has gone on between. Elizabeth is not the muse of the books. She is one of three major characters to die at or towards the end of each set of books: Francis’s death desolates Warleggan; now Elizabeth’s Angry Tide; and Jeremy at Waterloo in Twisted Sword is not to be gotten over by Demelza ever. It’s these larger patterns within which several story lines go on that matter. Horsfield softens the incompatibility of Dwight’s idea of a meaningful useful life with Caroline’s (in the novel frankly) boredom. She leaves us with a simple easily assimilable pattern and scarcely does justice to the experience she has offered over four years.
The young George and young Francis
At core the Poldark books are melancholy. Ross Poldark is a driven man, angry at the world’s injustice, striking out now and again insanely. Demelza provides for him a center of stability and hopefulness. I thus conclude this blog with Graham’s very last written story, “Meeting Demelza” The text has been published in a magazine long ago, and I cannot find it online but there is an audiobook. “Meeting Demelza.” Graham was near death when he wrote it, and in the story he looks to join his most beloved characters: Ross, Demelza — and Dwight — I just knew he loved Dwight as much as Ross and Demelza (Luke Norris this season began to hit the true note that Richard Morant seemed to capture effortlessly so long ago). It will take 12 minutes to listen to.
A ghost story before we go into that night. Ross (let’s recall) begins as a revenant.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Although not the book Graham used, there is a study of drugs that bring on parturition early and herbs used as abortifacients before the 20th century: John Riddle’s Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. It is as much about women attempting to cope and deal with the reality that after marriage very few had any ability to control the number of pregnancies (which also mean miscarriages) until the very later 19th century (when new techniques of rubber-making spread. I wrote a blog (warning it is party political in stance) about this book after I read The Angry Tide and wanted to know how realistic is the death of Elizabeth. Very. The problem with the book is that you can’t pinpoint which drug it was Graham is imagining: but he need not have a specific one in mind; a number of these drugs were also toxic; that’s why they brought on labor or were abortifacients. They were very dangerous for the woman too but early parturition was sometimes desired not just to have a baby earlier (so as to hide the date of contraception) but because the woman was feeling fatally unwell (for example, so nauseous she couldn’t eat — though they didn’t have names for these conditions by the 18th century you can find them written about)
https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/john-riddles-eves-herbs-a-history-of-contraception-and-abortion-in-the-west/
Elizabeth dies of gangrenous ergotism:
http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/LECT12.HTM
Ellen
One complete summary and evluation of an episode of the 1978-79 set will this year have stand for them all. The episodes in the two series do not align well over the later Four Swans and Angry Tide matter: both sets of writers and directors are taking the novels in different directions. It’s tough stuff. But here the interested reader can see how in depth is the treatment of the material, space given to episodes and thus complexity in comparison the 2018 rendition.
Episode 11 opens on elegant party at Penrice. George and Elizabeth have invited all the important and influential people of their class. And they have left out Ross and Demelza Poldark. A real slight, but it could be seen as politically motivated rather than a sheer snub. We see Enys and Caroline from the back going in, Whitworth the fat sycophantic hypocritical clergyman (clergymein Graham are often presented strongly critically) playing cards (he brings up politics as a reactionary, sneering at Jacobin clubs, rebellions, mutines), one of the Warleggan’s debtors, St John; the father, Nicolas Warleggan, another neutral man (he adds “not to mention the war that’s going on). Morwenna frozen to the side; Enys sits down by Morwenna, Caroline comes in with Monk Adderley who is introduced as saying he has never refused a duel but once m’dear: he wouldn’t fight his father because by no stretch of the imagination could my father be accounted a gentleman. Very nasty man — and he is a cold-blooded aggressive predator towards Demelza in London in _Angry Tide_, reminding me that Valentine is similarly conceived in the books.
In the conversation that ensues between Enys and Morwenna — who is decent enough to come over to her, alone as she is, we learn that now a hired nurse takes care of Morwenna’s child. Morwenna says this nurse makes Osborne not fear and so “he has his way in all things” and asks if she should ever need Enys, will he come. So Whitworth back to raping her and inflicting sadistic sex and sex she finds disgusting and distressing.
Now a scene where Whitworth chasing George for yet another position; even George embarrassed by this flagrant greed and social error.
At Nampara that night: we switch to Demelza persuading Drake to marry. Drake asks her, “Didn’t Ross love you when he married you. Her answer is complacent : she says it grew over the years but then we switch to see Ross haunting this great house and Elizabeth too. So this love is not fulfilled and the mini-series implies something the books never do. That Ross is dissatisfied with his lower class wife and relatives. In the book he never is. This sudden imposition of a reactionary and hierarchical validation is startling and shows that the film-makers did understood these books and didn’t like or feared something in them.
On the terrace at Nampara from Ross’s POV: Caroline avoiding Enys now seen on the terrace. Enys seeks her, “Do you not think we might go home now … she says that she wants to separate herself from him for a while in London. Again the mini-series openly implied Enys was impotent and the books never did; the books show Caroline imposing herself on Enys as a snob and him giving in, the books show discord but do not sympathize with Caroline in the sexual area. They suggest Caroline would have preferred the worldly socially active Ross not her bookish gentle doctorly husband. Elizabeth comes out and asks them to join everyong and and Caroline reiterates she will not go home with Enys.
Then Elizabeth halted by Ross as she is about to go on. A startling quick tete-a-tete. How’s Geoffrey Charles. He cares and she does. Is George still suspicious of Valentine; she says she’s calmed him but the very mention makes her say Ross must get away or she’ll be suspected again. She is fearful. Mark Adderley (an adder) comes in and insults Ross: “I confess I took you for a threadbare troubadour come to sing at my lady’s window and being dismissed without his proper pourboire.” Asks Ross who do you belong to: “I belong to Lord Croft by the way who owns you. ” Ross insists “no one owns me,” but when he is made to tell his borough, Adderly says there you are owned by Falmouth, are Falmouth’s man.
Now at Maryann’s cottage (=Rosina): Drake at Maryann’s: a moving proposal scene since all the while he confesses intense love for Morwenna. Maryann loves him and will take him on these terms. She does think love will come and happiness for them. She accepts him
Whitworth and Morwenna painful scene: he is demanding ugly sex, she insists that if he fires the governess she will kill the child.
This is juxtaposed to more of Drake’s proposal, Maryann’s beautiful acceptance, and then her drunken father’s acquiescence. Again the mini-series brings out as the books do not that the Carnes are beneath everyone socially. We move to Nampara to hear Prudie telling Demelza of this coming marriage; both father and now Prudie suggests Maryann could do better than a smith.
Ross comes in, he is sorry he won’t be here for wedding; Caroline left this morning. That he was at Warleggan party comes out. he says he went there to learn of this party and see that Elizabeth’s relationship with George peaceful. Demelzs “and yours [with Elizabeth]. Ross: “you should know my relationship with Elizabeth by now.” He says of Adderly something about him that made me shiver.” We see how far apart they remain still, despite his attempt in the last part to bring them together again.
Penrice: Adderly talking with Elizabeth several days after party George tells father he’s paying for Adderly’s postchaise, Adderly can be useful to George. St John is now gouged for the money from his loan by the son and father. Money is part of what makes someone powerful, but the mini-series keeps rank as actually in and of itself valuable.
The vicarage; Whitworth telling Morwenna of his trips on Thursday to Pascoe, the banker who is dying. We get the hypocrisy of the man again. His mother, Lady Whitworth to come and he’ll put her in charge of child. Again Morwenna’s blankness to the child: “I am quite indifferent to John Conan.
The poorest house we’ve seen: Rowella and Arthur Solway A librarian’s salary very low even then — now they are being fired right and left. Despised for a long time I see. Arthur says he fears no more copy work from Mr Pearce now that he’s dying. Rowella points out that the house rotting, rain comes in on the bed. We see she has coins in her jar unaccounted for, a rug, her pretty shoes. Where are they coming from? In the book by now we know that Whitworth visits Rowella for ugly sadistic sex each Thursday and pays her.
Now a soft happy scene; Demelza and Maryann fixing Drake’s home for the pair; Drake says that Sam pleased by connection to church going woman, “half-saved” he says.
Elizabeth comes to to try to talk to Morwenna who turns her off. “Why could you not have another of your sister’s here, it was such a happy arrangement with Rowella …” We see how Elizabeth understands nothing for real of what’s gone on. Morwenna simply says “We never see Rowella and we never speak of her here. She asserts (like Ross) her affection for Geoffery Charles: “I would recognize him …” “Morwenna are you so very unhappy …” To this Morwenna replies: “Have you heard that Drake Carne is to be married” “I hope she loves him more than anything I would like for Drake to be happy” Still Elizabeth though regretting this marriage asserts the hierarchy matters: she says at least the girl is his rank.
Solway’s house, downstairs: Whitworth and Rowella’s negotations over sex and money. She will not allow him up to the bed this time but next when he brings the money. As usual he left horse outside Pearce’. We see these trysts gonig on for some time all the while the roof drip so dreadfully .. next week if he brings 10 pounds.. We are not made to feel for Rowella ever as she is a phony utterly about all her emotion. She seems unreal really — but we are not given insight into her mind in the books either.
Warelggans squeeze St John for money too. George tells St John that they are calling inthe others as other ventures fail, are called in. Now Pearce is dead at last, George will go after all the loans from that bnak, the Warleggans will be the only bank except for Baskett’s. We see George is looking to crush Ross if ever he gets into debt or his debt comes into the Warleggan bank.
Now at Nampara: Ross takling to another man, he will not withdraw his money from a friend’s bank. He is going to London. Caroline’s invitation to join her comes to Demelza. And Ross says, “Why does Demelza not go. Ross seems indifferfent to her. “Would you like me to go?” “I’m sure Dwight would be pleased” says Ross. Demelza’s bitterness comes out when Ross will not say that he wants her.
He cannot forget her love for and adultery with Armitage although he wants her to accept his for Elizabeth (and the rape and Valentine as his son is a secret they don’t speak of but both know). This is as in the book.
Now we see Solway on the roof of his house fixing his roof. Rowella downstairs on bed. He thought he’d stay home tonight and we see how she maneuvers him to go using his disabled sister, Tabby. Tabby has fits he’s reminded. Solway: “you want me to go” Rowella “of course not we’ll sit by the fire and enjoy the cakes and sweetmeats ” — and “it’s most unlikely that Tabby will have one of her fits …” rouses his conscience “You have such a feeling for other people don’t you Rowella. Like Elizabeth an innocent in a way. We see his love for her She ways “Arhtur Solway I love you everything I do is for you Arthur.” Not so.
Demelza with new couple, Drake and Maryann, her lovely new things, their quiet contentment is felt. They are gathering things from combing a wreck
The series background of lingering slow music is brought in: it fits rhythm of books and these mini-series. WE are not in a melodramatic world is what is the feel. Solway returning early sees light in Rowella’s bedroom the horse and the truth dawns on him when he hears sounds in the bedroom. He climbs up the ladder and sees them. (Ugly scene implied — naked man and fetish playing with her laughing at Whitworth). Solway shaken, hurries down vomits. We see her cold look as Whitworth leaves, the cat’s yowl. Then a murder. Whitworth gets on his horse, rides in the wood, and out comes the maddened Solway and proceeds to hit by hard stick Whitworth dragged on ground by horse until dead. Solway maddened, rejoices, comes in and beats Rowella too: “He’s home early” is how she greets him, we see herh candle and him hysterical. He throws the cup of money at her
Penrice: George tells Elizabeth Whitworth dead and how he died which turns into the second half of story as Demelza shocked at Prudie’s story. Demelza realizes everyone knows includes Drake
Moving scene of Drake seeing off a customer, deep genuine upset and distress; kicks fire, he cannot go through with marriage.
Then series of juxtapositions: At vicarage Mowenna frozen with Elizabeth and George and can be roused only to insist she be left alone. This she does want. She has had enough. Maryann waiting and Drake comes to her and tells her She accepts this so sweetly — not real, but in the book it’s glided over. Drake talks of going to the beach and watching; the tide was coming in all angry and flurried I knew how it felt – an angry tide in him from the world. Maryann on Morwenna: “Go to her Drake.” Again the frozen Morwenna and Elizabeth with George looking on; no no to Rowella (mrs Solway).
A longer scene of Maryan’s father enraged drunk, she is abject in love and he fired with rage. When Maryann says Drake is not be blamed … he says he will destroy Drake and runs to the fore.
Now another set of juxtapositions. Drake arrives and we get this terrible scene with Morwenna when she says she is. Maryann’s father rushing to destroy him and then he’s not there on the farm intertwined with Morwenna’s rage, for that’s what it is. (Not in book. In book she is having a nervous collapse). Father is setting fire to Drake’s place. Back to Drake telling Morwenna of his past and what he feels now and what he’s done: “he’s sorry for her and Maryann, he went down to the shore, the sea looked angry as I was. Maryann understood. Morwenna is a thousand miles away. He sees this and says “he’ll go away and then back, I’ve my own place and we’ll be wed.” She shakes head slightly, “no one owns me but myself” he says. That important theme is in Graham and connects Drake to Ross. Drake says “Ill come back. She “Don’t touch me.” He says “I know how you must feel” She counters ”
no you don’t no one body knows nobody understands I’m not for you or anyone keep away it’s over Drake it ended years ago it can never begin again I am sick and contaminated I never want to see you again. She throws him out by askig servant to “have this person shown out.”
He’s horrified stunned. Can have no conception of years of marital rape, sadistic sex, repression, living with a cold mean man. The film makers have tried to give an equivalent to this central powerful message of the books.
Then all the while the firing of Drake’s house going on, a wild conflagration, once again far shot of beautiful place so hard worked on burning down and the part. All of the first season ended on such a conflagration of Trenwith before Ross and Demelza escaped to the shore to reaffirm love and companionship.
************
One reason it’s a shame the second season of the Poldark series was cut short and so eliminated much of the Drake Carne-Morwenna Whitworth denouement from the 12th episode is it’s a story which shows that for some marriage is salvation, it brings a precious joy and comfort and mainstay that nothing else can. It’s the near thwarting of this and the coercion of Morwenna into marriage with a kind of monster that drives Drake into a long depression.
Here is just one of the few stills of Kevin McNally’s performance as Drake Carne having learned Whitworth is dead, Morwenna free but is facing that tomorrow he is to wed a good kind able young woman, sweet, his class too. He cannot face deserting Morwenna. Kevin McNally carried it off without the abjectness of Harry Richardson.
Ellen
I didn’t say in the blog but will as an afterthought that after all the talk about Turner saying he did not want to go on because he did not not wante to be “aged” 10 years using make-up, as I looked back at the previous seasons in fact all the actors were made to look just a little bit older each year and if you look back at the first season and compare to this you can see the distance in time and experience they enact traveling. The prologue to Episode 8 has them made up to look younger.
I am glad that you also feel that Demelza has been diminished in favor of Elizabeth in this current series. Debbie Horsfield claims that Ross and Demelza are basically soul mates and that Poldark is the Portrait of a Marriage but it’s really been more about Ross and Elizabeth and I detest that! I have read Meeting Demelza but had not thought about it in the way you suggest. Of course he loved his creation.. Demelza! I might suggest she is the heroine of the story.
While we wait for the announcement about series 5, consider this. Fans in the fan groups responded positively to a prequel about Ross and Elizabeth! My comment about that was we’ve had four years of Elizabeth’s shadow hanging over Ross and Demelza, it is time to move on.
Perhaps you’re right and the problem with Horsfield’s conception of Elizabeth is she is also hanging on to Ross (while denying it). In the books she stands for the kind of icon from afar that men idolize (rather as in Proust, only Elizabeth is upper class), and she is aloof, her own woman or she would like to have been but could never see her way and made bad marriages. She is central to the plot-scheme (so to speak): the rape (end of 4 with its impasse between Ross and Demelza) leads to her death as she tries to escape the consequences from George, her new master (end of 7), fast forward ten years (8) and at the end of the whole series (12) the death of Valentine (and Ross’s deep sense of having failed one of his sons). Jeremy’s death at the end of Twisted Sword (11) could have ended the series, but it was not necessary for this scheme.
Thank you for this excellent blog entry. They are going to start filmung season 5 soon. It will be interesting to see what is done with shifting focus to the Poldark children
So I’ve been told. Let me ask on the face-book pages …
I want to add that I much preferred Max Bennett as Adderly. Really captured his poisonous personality.
Well Tierney was very good too. More snake-like; Bennett was the more dangerous because less obvious.
Richard Godson: “What an insightful and beautifully observed appreciation Ellen. You echo my own thoughts precisely and reduce them to writing far more concisely and eloquently than I could ever hope to do. Thank you.”
And thank you for this encouragement to continue …
Shannon Andy Makalsky: “Very good read”
Carol Worster: “Very good. It’s interesting that you use the word , melancholy to describe the books. I can see what you mean and certainly there are several dark moments. Overall though, I believe the books are joyful and I particularly enjoy the humour . Jud is one of the funniest characters I’ve ever read, and I was sorry his character was reduced to a drunk, mean old man in this production. He was so much more.”
Actually I agree. Graham said his Poldark novels were a bit too much on “sunny side” to get attention from critics, and I do think the earlier series was more accurate to have comedy and Jud was the center of a wry comedy that was satiric and endearing. They lost all comedy in the new Poldark. Much more grim.
Bonny Wise: “As usual, very insightful. I agree that too much focus was on the Ross/ Elizabeth relationship in the final episode… bothers me”
People, it would appear that not only will there be a fifth season, but Turner will be in it. That is at least what three people have now told me. Has Turner relented? I suspect he might miss being Ross after all. Who is the finer hero on a high quality serial drama anywhere on TV today, but Ross Poldark? He makes mistakes but he is earnestly rescuing the world. I liked that final speech to George: what do you want anyway? it’s not in the book, not part of Graham’s conception but it works well in the series which so often puts Ross at the center. Demelza is not allowed to save herself when pregnant; Sam is not allowed to save everyone in the mine alone; and finally Ross precedes Drake in finding Morwenna — this is Horsfield continually injecting her hero in. Turner cannot dislike that … And who kills off the goose laying such golden eggs for him?
Later in the morning: I have now been told that Tomlinson and Turner have five year contracts. Perhaps Horsfield thinks to woo Turner into accepting aging by having this inbetween matter? after all he is making very good money, he is getting excellent press. In the 1970s (as everyone should know by now) books 8-12 didn’t exist.
Ellen – Aidan Turner is contracted for five series. That is probably the only reason he is doing a fifth. We could speculate about his reasons for giving up now: I don’t buy the age thing. It may be that he wants more of a private life right now as he appears to be creating a home with Caitlin Fitzgerald. Poldark filming demands being in the west country for 5 months. It’s a guess and there may be other reasons such as he just wants a break from Poldark. There are rumours that DH is writing scripts for ‘The Count of Monte Cristo and that Aidan may be offered that part.
I forgot to say that I enjoyed your review of this series. Some thought provoking observations here. Thanks.
Well he has the example of what happened to Robin Ellis in front of him. Other actors have said when they become an icon of a character that gets in the way of further interesting roles. My guess is he is taking a chance to be able to expand his career — and his art. He shows aspirations for better parts, for the theater for example. But there’s a caveat: he may not get these parts. Unlike Ellis who had a thriving career in the RSC and other kinds of theaters, Turner has thus far made it as a popular TV star and the Monte Cristo role would further typecast him. Eleanor Tomlinson had had some central roles in prestigious serial dramas — she auditioned for Elizabeth, the aristocratic lady. Kyle Soller has gone on to do terrific stuff in theater, in Shakespeare productions.
compare this brief resume of the 1977 Episode 9:
Poldark Season 2, Part 9
Much of real interest, and a good deal sheer transposition from the book. Ross is coerced by Bassett into putting into jail the leaders of the miners and agricultural workers who had attacked a granary and corn place and taken the corn. They were starving and the price never came down nor did the goverment provide a subsidy. Ross loathes having to do it, but he does obey this law. He is made to see that were he an MP he might have power to ameliorate — he could have pardoned the man whose body we see hanging and rotting on a gibbet as the community returns from a ritual Sawle Feast 3/4s through the Part.
Elizabeth now threatens to leave George. She will not live with him if he carries on his horrible behavior to Drake; he tries to deny what he is doing, trivialize it, but she is having none of it. He demands to know if she loves Ross and she laughs, then on the Bible swears she has never had sex willingly with any man but her first husband and George. George does not recognize the gap in the oath but in any case he gives in only because she would indeed leave him.
The role is very hard to play: she is supposed an upper class woman taught repression and guardedness, also a kind of frail character unable to act out high emotional scenes; at the same time high self-esteem and adherence to hierarichal norms. She is destroyed by these norms acted out by George and Ross over her pregnancies and children — tries to make her third child appear to be 8 months by a dose which brings on a labor that kills her. I’ve put a still from Part 8 where she is realizing just how imprisoned she is and straining at the frustration, anger, itself partly at herself for having married George.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EighteenthCenturyWorlds/
She does refuse to go with him to London full-stop even if he wins the new election.
Sawle Feast done superlatively well. Like the Rudruth fair, done with real flair, not overproduced, the height a wrestling match between the bully henchman of George, Sid Rouse, and Sam Carne, egged on by Emma who offers to come to church for 3 months if he fight. Sam almost wins but at the last moment throws the hard struggle because he sees her wanting him to win and he actually fears she will pull him from his strong adherence ot his God and faith which is central to his world view and self-esteem.
As in soap opera aesthetics (which most of these mini-series costume dramas use) the fair is a place where we see all the characters come together and interact characteristically. Ross has bet George 100 guineas, but the guineas are to go to a fund for the starving — so when Sam loses, it matters not to Ross. Whitwroth is there with Morwenna now holding her own through her threat and havnig made her body off-limits; he discovers Rowella was not pregnant and she is again making up to him (for his money). Demelza and Drake hover over Sam.
We have an election where we understand the electors vote publicly and are under pressure from who they owe money to (Warleggans), vote by personal liking and other norms of admiration. Ross makes it by one vote.
Another thread of the series is the real love affair of Hugh Amitage and Demelza. Part 8 ended with them making love on the seals beach. Armitage dies in this part; his blindness a symptom of a larger disorder gotten in the prisons of France; Demelza called to his side. Threaded in are scenes where Ross is aware she is in love with this man and tolerant of it; in one he tells her of his continued affection for Elizabeth and how he can understand hers, but he cannot it seems when he discovers a compromising poem tolerate physical infidelity. The last scene has her having wandered out in the moor and come back to find Ross incensed.
The film most differs from the book by its presentation of Rowella and Whitworth and Solway, the librarian husband. It softens that enormously: Rowella and Whitworth enjoy nasty sex together is central to the book’s story, and not here, and Solway is a lower class innocent sensitive man who is quite unaware of all that has gone on and when he discovers the reality of his marriage turns to rage and murder — another motif in Graham but more in evidence in his murder mysteries.
Ellen
Just thinking Elizabeth was between a rock and a hard place. It’s clear the only reason George believes her now is that he believes the birth was premature – yet as later books will show that was not enough. She did it she says repeatedly to assure Valentine a good life, happiness, and as the books unfold, that’s what he doesn’t have at all as the loss of her was irreplaceable. She couldn’t tell anyone what she had done quickly enough because her culture dictated shame about this. A tragic heroine. How ironic and poignant that she gives the girl she wanted the name of a grandmother who was a pro-Wollstonecraft woman. Ellen
You are the best ever at Poldark
Thank you!!!
Ellen, I must watch this series. I gave up on the second episode of Season 1, much too soon apparently. I did like Demelza, though. I had read that the fourth would be the last season, so it is good news that it will continue. It will be shown in the U.S. in the fall, yes?
I don’t really like Demelza in this version, though I did very much in season 1. As the seasons go on, I find her less and less appealing. I think it comes down to your comment, that the writer and actress don’t really get her. I suspect Tomlinson hasn’t read the books very carefully; in an interview on the DVD she comes across as being a little embarrassed about the “bodice-ripping” genre, which really isn’t what the books are.
Maybe because of an assumption that Graham couldn’t have been very enlightened, the character’s moments are written larger and more overtly feminist. While the swing she took at Ross after his night with Elizabeth was fantastic, there is a carping aspect to her as the seasons wear on, that goes against Jeremy’s observation that his parents didn’t bicker, though they fought over important stuff. This Demelza is a bit of a nag. Plus she does inexplicable things, like trying to talk Drake and Morwenna out of their attraction. It’s not explained very well, though it’s consistent with her becoming harder and more focused on her own interests (since it seems to be an attempt to prevent contact with Elizabeth and George). I don’t know if that’s intentional. I wasn’t getting from the books that she was quite so interventionist.
It doesn’t help that I really don’t like her costumes. They’re really thin cloth, for one thing, which makes no sense. It feels like those ocean winds must whip right through them.
If Elizabeth is more memorable, for me it’s in part because it’s a more subtle portrayal. Maybe it’s the actress lending some ambiguity to it, but she comes across to me as conflicted in her sympathies, but just trying to be a supportive wife, against the memory of how dire her circumstances were before she married George. Also, she seems mostly motivated by her love for her children, especially Geoffrey Charles. Even when she ignores Valentine as a baby, it seemed to me it was because he represented a break with Geoffrey Charles, as George wanted to send him away to school, linking that with Valentine’s birth. I don’t know if that’s the case in the books, as I’m reading them backwards, for some reason.
Aidan Turner seem to have a good grasp of the full spectrum of Ross’s character. If they keep showcasing the heroic stuff, though, I wonder how they will reconcile Valentine, if they bring him into the series. Ross and Demelza aren’t at their finest when it comes to Valentine, and it was Ross’s cockamamie advice Elizabeth took to have another “premature” birth. Since I can only catch the latest season in pieces on YouTube, I don’t know if that was referenced.
Well he has the example of what happened to Robin Ellis in front of him. Other actors have said when they become an icon of a character that gets in the way of further interesting roles. My guess is he is taking a chance to be able to expand his career — and his art. He shows aspirations for better parts, for the theater for example. But there’s a caveat: he may not get these parts. Unlike Ellis who had a thriving career in the RSC and other kinds of theaters, Turner has thus far made it as a popular TV star and the Monte Cristo role would further typecast him.
I think Aidan Turner has as much chance of expanding his career as Robin Ellis. He has as much talent and looks as Ellis. And he is already known for roles other than Ross Poldark.
I am beginning to see a problem with Debbie Horsfield. Aside from a few quibbles, I had no problems with her adaptations of Graham’s first two novels. But I noticed that the more complex and ambiguous Graham’s saga became, the more Horsfield seemed incapable of doing justice to it. She kept making changes that struck me as unnecessary or perhaps some attempt on her part to portray Ross and Demelza that made them more palatable to the viewers. This has been the case ever since late Season Two. Actually, I think the 1970s series had suffered from the same flaw, but not to the same degree as Horsfield’s adaptation.
Perhaps you’re right and the problem with Horsfield’s conception of Elizabeth is she is also hanging on to Ross (while denying it). In the books she stands for the kind of icon from afar that men idolize (rather as in Proust, only Elizabeth is upper class), and she is aloof, her own woman or she would like to have been but could never see her way and made bad marriages.
I don’t think George would have been a bad marriage for Elizabeth if Ross had not raped her. I’m not saying that marriage to him would have been easy if the rape had not occurred. To me, there is no such thing as an easy marriage. But I feel that Ross’ rape and Valentine’s conception placed a cloud over her marriage to George that eventually led to tragedy.
Just to say this is a good comment — Or I agree 🙂
[…] been watching the fourth season of the 2015 Poldark series once again, and will be blogging about it here soon. I’ve never been to Denver, so now […]
I forgot I wrote this altogether and wrote another blog in which I offered detailed assessments of each episode — after watching the American airing:
https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2018/11/22/2018-poldark-the-fourth-season-four-swans-through-angry-tide/