(This post is part
of a series on the 14 Top TV Dramas You’ve Never Seen)
Now we come to my all-time favorites, as we count down The
Top TV Dramas You’ve Never Seen. Number 3 is Poldark. Set in 18th
century Cornwall, England against a backdrop of copper mining, famine, and riot,
Poldark begins with Captain Ross Poldark (Robin Ellis) returning home from the war in
the colonies (the American Revolution). He learns his family believed him killed
in the war; his fiancé Elizabeth (Jill Townsend) is about to marry his cousin Frances (Clive Frances), his
father has died, and the family business – a copper mine – is about to be sold.
Ross reopens one of the mines in an attempt
to restore his wealth.
Ross Poldark was greatly affected by ideals of the American
Revolution, and returns a rebel against his social class. His former fiancé
Elizabeth, is a frosty, upper class society woman. Frances is flippant but at times obstinate.
Rival George Warleggan (Ralph Bates) is one of the nouveau riche class of industrialists and
bankers, looked down on by the aristocracy but nonetheless a powerful man.
Demelza (Angharad Rees), a teenage miner's daughter taken in by Ross, is courageous but
impulsive; she is brash and down to earth, the opposite of the fragile
Elizabeth.
Based on the first seven of 12 novels by Winston Graham,
Poldark is about triangles. There is the love triangle among Ross, Elizabeth,
and Frances; a power struggle triangle among Ross, Frances, and Warleggan; a love
triangle among Ross, Elizabeth, and Warleggan after France’s death; and a love
triangle among Ross, Elizabeth, and Demelza.
The beauty of Cornwall’s hills and harbors is juxtaposed
against the riots, smuggling, poaching, and child labor among the miners. It is
a story of class struggle and lost love, epitomized by the ongoing feud between
idealist Ross Poldark, a man born to the aristocracy who turns his back on his
own class, and power-driven George Warleggan, the nouveau riche grandson of an
illiterate blacksmith who resents Ross for caring so little for the class
privilege into which he was born.
Poldark was definitely one of my favorite shows. It
introduced me to Cornwall and inspired me to travel there three years after the
show concluded, where I visited Truro and Falmouth, two of the series’ locales.
Poldark is one of the most successful British TV dramas ever broadcast. Find this series and watch it; you will enjoy it. The clip
below shows Ross bringing home the scrungy gamine Demelza (in the books she was
13; a few years older in the show) whom he is destined to fall in love with and
marry. Warning: There was an adaptation of the eighth Poldark novel, "Stranger From the Sea", that was aired in 1996 with a different cast and was terrible. Avoid it and read the novels instead.
UPDATE: Saddened to learn Angharad Rees died on July 21, 2012, at age 63, of pancreatic cancer.
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