DEBORAH ROSS: Poldark and the great Pizza Disease mystery

Poldark

Sunday, BBC1 

Rating:

Conviction: Murder In Suburbia

Tuesday & Wednesday, BBC2

Rating:

So Cap’n Poldark, where are we this week? I’ll tell you where we are, as is my way, and because there’s no stopping me. There was The Tin Bath Moment, which would have been neither here nor there, if those ‘double standards’ had not kept me glued – damn those ‘double standards!’ – and you lost your bet with Full-On Evil George, as made in The Red Lion which, if we were striving for accuracy, Cap’n, should probably be renamed The Pub Of Eavesdropping, Exposition And Swift Plot Advancement. 

There you were, in The Pub Of Eavesdropping, Exposition And Swift Plot Advancement – either way, it is probably a Pizza Express or Weatherspoons now, Cap’n – when Full-On Evil George bet you 100 guineas that Big Tom Harry would beat Sam Born-Again Carne in that fight they had coming up. You said that you would take this bet but only if the winnings went on whoring, gambling and upskirting (still not illegal in 2018, Cap’n!). But I be just having a joke with you, as is also my way. Instead, you said only if the winnings were handed over to charity and then Dr Dwight suggested ‘the new hospital in Truro’ and you were all over that and sometimes I do not know who is more upright, you or Dr Dwight. If there were ever an Upright Fight Off, I am not sure who I’d bet on, Cap’n, although I do think you’d be ahead, if impassioned speeches were taken into account. Meanwhile, I have to say it so say it I will: if you have 100 guineas to spare on a bet, could your household not run to buying Prudie a hairbrush? 

Hugh (Josh Whitehouse) in Poldark. 'He was suffering from ‘brain fever’ but by the time Dr Choake finished with him it looked like Pepperoni Pizza Disease,' writes Deborah Ross

Hugh (Josh Whitehouse) in Poldark. ‘He was suffering from ‘brain fever’ but by the time Dr Choake finished with him it looked like Pepperoni Pizza Disease,’ writes Deborah Ross

But Cap’n, on to the big event, which was the death of poor Hugh. He was suffering from ‘brain fever’ but by the time Dr Choake finished with him it looked like Pepperoni Pizza Disease. I am not just saying this but I was never taken with Hugh, Cap’n. ‘I’m going blind, lay with me,’ he did say to Demelzabub. So being kind of heart she did lay with him in the dunes, even though it must have been a messy business with all that sand. And then Hugh did say, ‘Lay with me again, or it will be the death of me.’ But Demelzabub did not want to get the sand all over her again and Hugh did die and then we all felt a bit bad, because we did not imagine a non-laying could actually be fatal. (Who  knew?) Hugh has now, presumably, joined the Dead Bad Poet’s Society in the sky and Demelzabub is grieving and you are grieving even if you should have knocked his block off but I am not grieving. Fancy telling another man’s wife that she must lay with him or he’ll die, even if it’s true! If Hugh had been in The Archers, Cap’n, he’d be a national hate figure by now. For real. 

The episode was busy, busy, busy, as per. You  are now off to London to become an MP and abolish slavery, which is good, as saving the poor is very last year, while Perpetually Framed Drake has returned to Perpetually Moping Drake, which is as he will stay until he’s framed again. In other news, Tom did win the fight against Sam, Morwenna still seems to have lost her baby (where is it?), Reverend Perve has returned to sucking toes and Elizabeth is having one of her Lady Macbeth episodes. But back to the tin bath, if we may. And I have to say it so say it I will: time to let Prudie have a go? 

On to Conviction which, Cap’n, is one of those true-crime documentaries that are all the rage, but it was different than most as it ran to two episodes rather than the usual 678. Here we had Louise Shorter of not-for-profit organisation Inside Justice looking into the case of Glyn Razzell, who had thus far spent 14 years in prison for the murder of his estranged wife, Linda, whose body had never been found. His alibi was iffy but Shorter was forensic. Could he have abducted Linda in that busy alley? Why were the bloodstains not found in his car until the third police search? Could Linda have been murdered by the serial killer who was caught some years later and who some claimed had known her? 

Shorter was on it. Shorter would never have let Jago hang, Cap’n. But in the second episode she learned that Razzell had previously been up in court for pushing Linda through a glass door. ‘I just brushed past her…’ he started to say on the phone from prison. Shorter was shaken. She said to camera, ‘The fact there was violence in the relationship… not much of a leap to think it all erupted one day so I find that hard.’ And then there was the polygraph test that never was, and it all turned. Fascinating, gripping and wholly unpredictable unlike, say, ITV’s Long Lost Family: What Happened Next, and what did happen next? I cried all over again, that’s what, Cap’n.  

Advertisement



Read more at DailyMail.co.uk