If you enjoy watching actors waft about in pretty costumes as characters of wealth and ease, then this will be as much your bag as 'Downton Abbey'. It parts company with the latter on its message, however. The household at Downton, as written by Julian Fellowes, is a jolly affair where the boss is paternal and ties of love and human fallibility link those upstairs with those downstairs, (who nonetheless know their place, naturally). The Birling family, by contrast, are the sort of smug, arrogant types who see their servants and employees as borderline beings, foreign to their own sensibilities and hardly worth a moment's thought, never mind decent wages.
Produced in 1945, at the fag end of the most violent conflict in recorded history, JB Priestley's play places the blame for almost half a century of unrest on a settled order that relied on enormous inequality. Set in 1912, with talk of a coming war among the European powers jockeying for empires, the successful industrialist Birlings are celebrating the engagement of their daughter to a business rival's son with a quiet at-home, i.e. an extravagant dinner. They are visited by Inspector Goole, investigating a young woman's suicide, and it becomes apparent that far from the poor woman being nothing to do with them, they have each played a part in bringing her to wretchedness. Having thoroughly shamed them, Goole then bids them good evening, but their unwillingness to face up to their culpability leads them to question what has happened. It seems there is no Inspector Goole, and no suicide, but....
About half the UK population will probably be reminded of their schooldays, since this has been a staple of English courses for some time. Familiarity may breed contempt for what is actually a clever piece of theatre, only dulled somewhat in Goole's rather expositional moralising about community. Clearly Margaret Thatcher either never saw this, or won a prize from her Edwardian-loving teachers for her essay rebutting Priestley's ideas. This television adaptation, as part of a season of BBC remakes of 20th Century classics, featured a fine cast and good acting, with Ken Stott as the blustering Arthur, Miranda Richardson as his thin-lipped snob of a wife and David Thewlis as the eponymous Inspector. A little old-fashioned in tone it may be, but with its depiction of the well-off claiming to have no responsibility for anyone outside their immediate family, it's as pertinent as ever.
If you like your swashes buckled, your bodices ripped and your upper lips stiff as you like, you really are spoiled for choice on UK TV at the moment, with the 'Musketeers', 'Banished', 'Arthur and George', 'Indian Summers' and 'Mr. Selfridge' all jostling with each other in the schedules, and now, going head-to-head on a Sunday with two of the above, comes 'Poldark'. (That's pronounced 'PolDARK' btw, with the emphasis on the last syllable, Cornish-style.) The series of eight episodes is based on the first two of Winston Graham's novels which form an epic family saga of late 18th Century tin mine-owning squires. Several were filmed in the mid 1970s and that adaptation, staring Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees, retains a fan following so devout that an attempt in the late 90s at a sequel following the next generation (but without any of the original stars) sank without trace.
Galloping up, then, is Aidan Turner, who admittedly looks the part to the extent that you wonder why he hasn't already been cast as Heathcliff, Mr. Rochester and every other brooding hero you care to name. Turner plays the eponymous Ross Poldark, newly returned in defeat from the American War of Independence, to find his once-prosperous home and mines gone to wrack and ruin after his father's death. Thinking Ross lost in the war, his fiance Elizabeth (Heida Reed) has got engaged to his drippy cousin Francis (Kyle Soller), none of which turns Poldark from a brooder into a cheery chap. This first episode sees him rescuing young tomboy Demelza Carne (Eleanor Tomlinson) and suffering the violent repercussions of her brutish kinfolk; meanwhile he vacillates about whether to make something of his dwindled inheritance or leave the crashing Cornwall waves behind him.
So, will this be as popular as the '70s version? Almost certainly not, but that has as much to do with the multitude of channels and viewing-on-demand available now. Times have changed in other ways too - the original saw Sunday evening church services in abeyance because parishioners were apparently glued to the screen. This is a perfectly respectable adaptation of Graham's original prose, and so far faithful to the previous TV version too. It's also good Sunday evening hokum with a cracking cast and that lovely wild coastline as a backdrop. It's a worthy last job for the late Warren Clarke as Uncle Charles Poldark, and Ruby Bentall finally steps out of dim-girl roles as the centre of gravity of the piece, Ross's cousin Verity. (There's also an improvement, in the persons of Beatie Edney and Phil Davis as Prudie and Jud, whose every appearance in both book and previous version had the attention wandering.) If they keep up this standard, we hope they go on to become a Sunday staple. After all, this has the blessing of the previous Ross, Robin Ellis, who makes a cameo appearance in the series.
