DEBORAH ROSS: How dare the Cap’n keep his clothes on!
Poldark
Sunday, BBC1
Ah Cap’n, you have finally come back to us, and Sunday evenings can feel like Sunday evenings again, with Demelzabub walking the cliff paths as her gorgeous hair whips in the wind, and you dashing to that London to save the King from an assassination attempt, take on the state and free an old friend from prison. When most people visit that there London, Rars, they go to The Mousetrap and that’s about it, so fair play to you and just so you are not penalised for your self-sacrifice: the butler did it.* I suppose you could say, Rars, that I’ve now ruined it for readers who plan to see The Mousetrap but the way I look at it, I’ve freed then up to book a different, better show. Rars, you’re not the only one doing good around here.
Aidan Turner staying dry in Poldark. This series has yet to find its feet, by which I mean: heart
Rars, the first episode of your fifth series was as action-packed as ever with a new storyline every four seconds, but I had to dock a star as you must be punished for 1) being out on that little fishing boat and not skinny dipping and 2) see 1). However, given your children, Jeremy and Clowance, appear to be growing up mute, I couldn’t go for docking two stars, as that would have been too cruel. You have enough on your plate, Cap’n!
Still, this series has yet to find its feet, by which I mean: heart. You, Demelzabub, Elizabeth, Full-On Evil George. That’s what everything has always come back to. Sexual jealousy was always where this was at, narratively. And now Elizabeth is dead – don’t take the potion, don’t take the potion! Too late – there’s a hole that can’t be filled simply with derring-do and being on the right side of the abolitionist debate, yawn. An important debate, of course, but also: yawn.
We want more of your relationships. There were firebombs and evil colonialists and bolshie peasants but the best scene by far was that quiet one between you and George when he refused to stump up for Geoffrey Charles to attend military academy. That was the two of you still fighting over Elizabeth’s love. That was riveting. How old, by the way, is Geoffrey Charles now? Twenty? Yet you and Demelzabub don’t seem to have aged a bit. What’s your secret? Clarins? I’ve heard it is excellent but have yet to splurge myself. (Meanwhile, Garrick is what in dog years – 140 or thereabouts?)
This episode saw George leave Trenwith for Truro, with sad little Valentine in tow, who looks the spit of someone or other, Rars, but I can’t remember who. I nearly had it when he waved unhappily at you from under that table, as his black curls tumbled, but no. Hopefully it will come back to me at some point. Geoffrey Charles then held a dinner at Trenwith before inviting Drake and Morwenna to house-sit. ‘No hanky-panky, mind,’ he did not say, but then he didn’t have to. If there was one thing of which he could be certain, it was that. Demelzabub? Left behind to deal with the bolshie peasants, although why they blamed her for George cutting the wages at his mine, I truly didn’t know. Tess (Sofia Oxenham) is leading the unrest and may or may not have firebombed Nampara in the middle of the night. Thank God for 140- year-old Garrick, barking and waking everyone up before they burned in their beds. (Those poor children; mute, then incinerated. What short, tragic lives they’d have silently led.)
As for George, he has fallen in with this rich fella who wants him to join his mahogany empire, and shall henceforth be called ‘Mahogany Man’, as that saves me from having to look him up. Mahogany Man is why your old friend from your army days, Ned Despard (Vincent Regan), had been wrongly imprisoned. It was Ned’s wife Kitty (Kerri McLean) who first appealed to you for help. She came to Nampara and is black, and Prudie had to tell Tess to not look at her all ‘squinny-eyed’. Kitty had been a slave. Kitty gave a speech in a pub about the horrors of slavery, which curdled the soul, but also: yawn.
As for you, you saved the King from an assassination… Oh God, I’ve just remembered. You saved him from being assassinated… at the theatre. Was it The Mousetrap? If so you’ll know it was the butler* and if not I’ve saved you from ever imagining you might go, so no harm done. And whatever you saw, did you go the Rainforest Café after and think it a rip-off? I know I always do. Whatever, the government said it would release Ned, given you’d saved the King, but in return for that, would you do some spying for them? Interesting, but not as interesting as George going mad with grief and imagining Elizabeth opposite him at the dining table. Rars, the landscape of mind is just as important as the landscape of action, if not more so, and I hope and pray the rest of this series recognises that. But welcome back anyhow. Yes indeed.
*Only joking!
