Aidan Turner’s Ross Poldark strides home from the American War of Independence in 1783 to find his father dead, the copper mine flooded and his intended bride, Elizabeth (Heida Reed), engaged to cousin Francis. Between moonlit smuggling runs and underground shifts at the reopened Wheal Leisure, he weds servant girl Eleanor Tomlinson’s Demelza Carne, a match that scandalises the county and gives the eight-year, 43-episode BBC One run its emotional spine.
Debbie Horsfield’s adaptation compresses Winston Graham’s dozen post-war novels into five seasons, moving the action from Ross’s election to Parliament in 1796 to the French prison camps of 1801. Cinematographer Cinders Forshaw shoots the Cornish coastline as a third protagonist: cliffs blaze at dusk, Atlantic storms batter the mine-workings, and the camera lingers on Turner’s shirtless scything scene that drew 9.4 million viewers for the second-series premiere.
The production base at Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios built 18 standing sets for the final year, including a full-scale 18th-century House of Commons chamber. Mammoth Screen’s budget rose from £8 million for series one to £12 million for the last, money visible in the mud-spattered costumes, candle-lit tin-mine tunnels and the crunch of real ore underfoot. Composer Anne Dudley’s score threads Celtic pipes through courtly strings, a nod to Cornish identity that quietly undercuts the Warleggan banking dynasty personified by Jack Farthing’s silk-waistcoated George.
Broadcast between 2015 and 2019, the drama averaged 7 million overnight viewers and sold to 150 territories, turning Porthcurno beach and the tin-engine houses of Botallack into tourist magnets. The BBC cancelled the show after the fifth novel cycle, closing on Ross and Demelza’s reconciliation rather than the later Napoleonic plots, a decision that preserved Turner’s scarred, smiling hero as Cornwall’s windy-haired immortal.
Production Details
BBC One / 5 Seasons / 43 Episodes / 2015
Created by: Debbie Horsfield, Winston Graham
Showrunner(s): Karen Thrussell, Debbie Horsfield, Rebecca Eaton
Writer(s): Debbie Horsfield
Producer(s): Roopesh Parekh, Tom Mullens
Main Cast
Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark
Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza Poldark
Jack Farthing as George Warleggan
Beatie Edney as Prudie Paynter
Tristan Sturrock as Zacky Martin
Luke Norris as Dwight Enys
Heida Reed as Elizabeth Warleggan
Gabriella Wilde as Caroline Enys
Pip Torrens as Cary Warleggan
Ruby Bentall as Verity Blamey
Caroline Blakiston as Aunt Agatha
Tom York as Sam Carne
