Poldark (1996)

What a mess and a waste of a talented cast. Easily the worst 'Poldark' adaptation, and that is saying a huge amount seeing as the 1975 version is a masterpiece and the 2015 series while with minor flaws is otherwise great and often magnificent.The only redeeming merits of this adaptation are some beautiful scenery and costumes and a highly credible Demelza in Mel Martin, played with plenty of fire and emotion. The cast is a talented one on the whole but are practically wasted, waste of talent is a big bugbear of mine and is just unacceptable. John Bowe has the looks but not the charisma for Poldark, and his chemistry with Martin nowhere near sizzles, instead as bland as soggy sandwiches.Ioan Gruffudd is very awkward and doesn't look comfortable in any way, while Kelly Reilly's performance is devoid of any expression of any kind. The worst asset is the storytelling, which is rushed, very jumpy and often abrupt, giving a sense of incompleteness, and it makes most events and subplots very difficult to follow. The editing is also all over the place, sometimes choppy, sometimes chaotic and sometimes sloppy, while the direction is ham-fisted and heavy-handed and the script is dreary and startlingly amateurish.All in all, watch the 1975 and 2015 versions instead. This is easily skip-able and best forgotten. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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.

I wish this sequel had been with the original cast, however given the time span involved from when it was originally shown, the actors would probably have been difficult to re-assemble. The acting in the new version was however excellent, my only complaint was that it was left hanging on every story line. How do you go about purchasing the rest of this series, surely it was just not left up in the air like this, in short this being such an all time beloved series, what were the distributors of the DVD's thinking. The actors, scenery, costumes and settings were outstanding, wish they had gone ahead with thoughts of turning this into a spectacular movie. So many books still to cover and with such a wide viewing audience you would think it would be a certain hit at the box office would be fun to try casting the movie. Any thoughts out there on who should be cast in the lead roles?

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.