Thus when Clowance and Stephen prepare to snack on each other in an orchard, music, may not be quite the food of love, but you re left in no doubt that it is at least, its sauce. Any potentially dramatic moment was signalled by the sort of clamour normally confined to The Last Night of the Proms. You could have kept up with the buckling and ripping just by listening to the orchestra. Anyway, following some ponderous scene setting, the raison d'etre of the series - swashbuckling and bodice-ripping - got underway. The backdrop had England at war with France. The plot, such as it was, involved trouble at the Cornish tin mine, which had produced gold for the BBC back in the 1970s? Clowance falling for the dodgy, if edible, Stephen, who was washed up in the opening-scene Jeremy getting himself mixed-up with Stephen's brandy smuggling. Manfully, he tried to smoulder but found it hard not to confuse the appropriate gaze with the pained look of constipation.

So too was Angharad Rees who played his headstrong wife Demelza.Įllis and Rees were replaced by John Bowe and Mel Martin, a move which apparently caused outrage among them Poldark appreciation Society (no joking!) So, set in 1810 (12 years on from where the original series ended) the next generation of Poldarks - son Jeremy (loan Grufudd) and daughter Clowance (Kelly Reilly) - were allowed to hog most of the screen time. Many of the old ingredients were assembled for its two-hour special but, crucially, Robin Ellis - who 20 years ago as Ross Poldark could turn millions of women to jelly - was missing.

Poldark, largely because it had been a favourite dish in the 1970s, was the main course. Since midweek, the TV set has been belching. With Wilderness, Beck and Poldark, it seems as if this season's British television drama is hungry to capitalise on the medium's current craze for food shows. RAVENOUS women, one a werewolf another a junk-food freak and a third hungry enough to munch her way through Cornwall's young studs, dominated the week on TV.

Feeding frenzy 1