Confiscate Poldark’s passport — the show only shines in Cornwall
ForGET bathing in asses’ milk like Queen Cleopatra, or snorting cocaine off the bald heads of dwarfs, as Queen’s Freddie Mercury was rumoured to do at parties.
For sheer sybaritic decadence, nothing can compare to eating strawberries in bed on the sunday of the Wimbledon men’s finals.
Wicked George Warleggan (Jack Farthing) and his laudanumaddled wife Elizabeth were propped up on pillows and munching from bowls of ripe red fruit in Poldark (BBC1). It’s just a shame they lived 200 years too early for the tennis.
of course, being nouveau riche (or ‘lowborn’ in Poldark parlance), George can’t really carry off such dissolute self-indulgence. He was primly buttoned up in his gold Paisley pyjamas, and lay a regulation 18in apart from his wife (Heida reed) who had the sheets pulled up to her neck.
unlucky, George. Everyone else was at it. snooty Caroline was cooing, ‘My love, shall we to bed?’ at her hubbie — the escaped prisoner of war Dr Enys (Luke Norris), who was so traumatised by his spell in a French prison that he’d come out in scabby fishscales all over his face.
Poor Luke . . . you know you’re no longer the show’s chief love interest when the producers give you a disfiguring disease. The current romantic lead Drake Carne, played by Harry richardson, cemented his heart-throb status by removing his shirt to snog governess Morwenna (Ellise Chappell).
Meanwhile, Aidan Turner as the Cap’n himself emphasised that he has retired from the beefcake stakes, by remaining fully clothed as the villagers went scything.
Poldark has had a wobbly few episodes, what with all the French revolution swashbuckling and the jailbreak subplot. The show is best when confined to Cornwall’s country houses and sea-swept clifftops.
No one wants scenes in some unsavoury Bordeaux tavern, reeking of garlic and boiled snails. For one thing, it looks the sort of place where you might bump into Tony and Cherie Blair on holiday, and that’s enough to make even Bold Cap’n ross lose his nerve.
The story is back on solid ground now, and much better for it. on top form this drama can belt along like Demelza on a runaway stallion.
The last ten minutes saw Drake arrested for toad- smuggling and Bible theft, threatened with the noose, and freed . . . while his sweet- heart was married off to sweaty cleric osborne Whitworth (Christian Brassington). There was more excitement in his mischievous raids on Cornish ponds than in all the Froggiebashing heroics overseas.
Confiscate Poldark’s passport — this show mustn’t be allowed out of the country again.
For real Continental thrills, the spanish family melodrama I Know Who You Are (BBC4) delivered glamour and mystery that was as stylish as a glossy magazine spread and was about as credible.
Francesc Garrido plays top lawyer Juan Elias, who is having an affair with his grown-up niece until she disappears, leaving a trail of blood. Elias pleads total memory loss, a trick that has helped many of his clients beat criminal charges as well.
It’s a clever device that means all the characters have to introduce themselves and explain how they know him.
They are all as well-groomed as models, except the fat, sceptical police inspector Giralt (Pepon Nieto), a man with ‘ famous intuition’, and a dead ringer for another TV Euro- detective, Italy’s Montalbano.
Though it lacks the historical weight of Deutschland 83 or the psychological depth of The Killing, this is classy fare. For fans of telly with subtitles, it will be compulsive saturday night viewing for the next month.