Is Poldark faithful to its literary origins?

As 7 million viewers await the finale of Poldark, Sarah Crompton goes back to the novels to find the story’s appeal is as much to do with social cohesion as sex

In the mid-1970s, I spent a summer sitting on the olive moorland that rolls along the Cornish coast, sketching picturesque ruins of tin mines. The fact that I could barely draw is an indication of how firmly Poldark fever had me – and countless others like me – in its grip. Truth be told, I don’t really recall now much of what entranced me: my childish memories are a blur of high leather boots, passionate stares and Angharad Rees’s tumbling tresses. But there was something magical in the BBC’s first adaptation of Winston Graham’s long series of novels, something more than the tang of the sea and the dash of a handsome hero.

Now, all these years later, the same Sunday night spell is being cast on up to 7 million households. Or at least on the women in them. If the comments on social media are any guide, then this is the night that men do anything they long to get away with (my boys stalk out muttering “We’ll leave you with your Cornish crap”), while their womenfolk (you begin to speak Poldark once you start watching it) remain glued to the television and to a romantic protagonist who seems to have trouble keeping his shirt on.

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