Sorry girls, it’s too cold for a shirtless Poldark!
IT was voted TV moment of the year at the National Television Awards and transformed Aidan Turner into a national heart-throb.
But there will be no repeat of the topless scything scene in the new series of Poldark – because it was too cold during filming.
Hearts were set racing last year when Turner, as Ross Poldark, bared his chiselled torso while cutting grass in a field. And Twitter went into overdrive when he stripped off for a nude swimming scene.
Yet Debbie Horsfield, who wrote the adaptation of Winston Graham’s novels for the BBC, said the weather was just too nippy in Cornwall last autumn.
She told a Royal Television Society event in London: ‘Unfortunately autumn is very chilly in Cornwall, so he won’t be doing any more of that.’
The forthcoming ten-episode series will be an adaptation of the third and fourth books by Graham, but Miss Horsfield said she resisted temptation to include regular nudity, like in recent BBC dramas The Night Manager and War And Peace. She did offer some consolation for fans, however, confirming that they would get a few peeks at Turner’s pecks. ‘You see a couple of moments in the bedroom where Ross has no top on, but that’s as raunchy as it gets,’ she said. ‘I think it’s quite subtly done to be honest.
‘I am a believer in less is more. I think a lot of attention has gone on the scything scene and the swimming scene, over eight hours that is probably 20 seconds. It is about the same in series two.’
Including viewers watching on catch-up, Poldark’s first series drew an average audience of 7.6million across its eight episodes, and peaked at 8.8million. The next series is set to air this autumn.
Miss Horsfield also said she has already started working on scripts for the fifth and sixth novels in the hope that a third series is commissioned.