ianlouisiana ...running just over the hour if you cut out the ads(and this is freeview with ads about every ten minutes),this travesty was shown the other afternoon as a "feature "film and made absolutely no sense. There was no background for the characters,no explanation of the Poldark/Warleggan feud,clearly huge lumps had been chopped out making the whole thing pointless. We arrived at a point where the story had obviously been running for some time and left so abruptly it was almost rude- in the middle of Clowance stomping off in high dudgeon with obviously a lot to be done before the end of the story. It was as if I was watching one episode from a tv series at about the halfway point in it's run. It was an insult to both viewers and performers. The Independent Television Authority needs to look hard at what is being used under it's auspices to sell funeral insurance and stairlifts. A lot of it's audience may be old - but it's not stupid.

speedo58 We were left waiting for the next sequence. The VHS tape started to crackle and we knew there was no more! What happens next? Surely they aren't going to leave us up in the air like this! The actors who played Poldark and Sir George could have been played by twins. We couldn't tell them apart. The scenery and costumes are lovely, but the "gentlemen" are all like cardboard cutouts. The flaming red hair of Clowence made for some spectacular photography, but she didn't have a range of expression. The most interesting character was Mrs. Poldark, full of fire and intelligence, and you wondered how she and the stuffed shirt Poldark ever got together! Like eating popcorn, it left us empty.

Kashmahal The old Poldark afficiandos regard this as a blasphemy. But I've noticed some reviews on Amazon that are a little less anorak and a little more objective, some of which are fairly favourable, one or two very much so. On its own terms it does have flaws. The book on which it is based is more an old man's ruminations than a story and any adaptation was going to run into problems. That said, the cast is great (the much-missed originals might well have floundered with their mannered performances, okay in the seventies but ... well ...), the locations and design are quite stunning and the story sort of lopes along a bit erratically but there are some good scenes. Laxton directs with finesse, in my view, and the script is more elegantly poetic than I think its audience was expecting. It does end rather suddenly but this was probably meant as a pilot to a series. On reflection, the stories are resolved, in a way, but leave something to the viewer to work out. Probably far too ambitious considering its natural constituency and in the end, possibly a compromise between something new and pandering to the old. It couldn't win. But it's actually a good piece of work. Congratulations all round.

hilandgeo This very poorly done production jumps from scene to scene and appears like many parts must have been cut out to make it fit into the scheduled time(sound familiar?). Then, it ends abruptly, leaving all the story lines up in the air. It looks like this might have been parts of a mini series that was never completed. Don't expect this to compare with the original Poldark series. A real waste of some very good talent.