Poldark
BBC One
★★★★☆
After an unfortunate kissing incident at the church, the situation between Poldark and his first love, Elizabeth, was clearly explained by Ross to Demelza last week. He loved Elizabeth, but not as he once did. It was a fondness, “a ghost of a love”. It had changed because he loved Demelza. How well this would have gone down is hard to know, because Ross did not actually say any of it. In a neat bit of messing about with the series’s realism (I use the term loosely), he merely thought it, in reality blanking Demelza’s tiresome inquiries.
Ross Poldark is the most annoying man to argue with. He doesn’t say much but what he says is always brilliant, especially when delivered from the depths of Aidan Turner’s larynx. In last night’s finale, weak and wicked George Warleggan — Poldark’s enemy, although Ross can barely be bothered to pursue the feud these days — had been thoroughly bested in an argument with Elizabeth and was staring miserably out to sea when he noticed Ross in similar pose next to him.
Reassuming his persona of life’s least magnanimous victor (Jack Farthing did the partial recovery brilliantly), he recounted a series of beliefs that allowed him to be optimistic: Elizabeth’s loyalty (wrong); his son (he isn’t); and his glittering parliamentary future (come off it). “And what do you believe, Ross?” Ross replied, infuriatingly: “That belief is a beautiful thing.” As Eric Morecambe used to say, there’s no answer to that.
Poldark has its dull patches, mainly those that concern the mines, wars and famine. On marriages, however, it is excellent. Even the happiest, at present Dwight and Caroline’s, has had its Relate crisis centre moments. The worst, just beating the toxic heap that is George and Elizabeth’s, is that between Morwenna and Ossie, the reverend rapist whose only interest in matrimony is the opportunity it furnishes for his conjugal rights. Forbidden them while Morwenna recovers from childbirth, he has been having it off with her cunning sister, Rowella, the one with the peek-a-boo toes. Now she is pregnant. Christian Brassington, done up in a bow like a Christmas cheese, gives us a two-dimensional villain in Ossie, but sometimes two dimensions are quite enough, thank you very much. Unlikeable though Rowella is, her successful blackmailing of her brother-in- law will have provoked cheers.
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The loudest of these will surely, however, have been for Demelza, who finally remembered that actions speak louder than words and that old thing about ganders and geese. The great will-she/won’t-she of the past few weeks has been whether she will succumb to handsome Hugh’s ever more poetic entreaties that she should abandon her bloomers to him in the cause of love. The man will use any argument, even his encroaching blindness. Yesterday he clinched the deal in the long grass by suggesting that by “granting” themselves to each other he could “go into darkness knowing he had tasted heaven”.
Eleanor Tomlinson, who gets better and better as Demelza, kept us guessing until the end how much granting she would do, and on her return home she left Ross guessing too. The two now have an ask-no-questions open marriage. Very modern, and very unsatisfactory I should think.
andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk