Program Title
Poldark, I

Based On
The novels by Winston Graham

Adapted By
Jack Russell, Peter Draper, Paul Wheeler, Jack Pulman

Number of Episodes:
16

Description
"Poldark" is set in Cornwall, England against a backdrop of copper mining, famine, and riot. The disastrous American War of Independence is over, and home from that war comes Ross Poldark. A rebel against his class, Ross holds notions of liberty, fraternity, and equality, engendered by his experiences in America and fostered by the overthrow of the monarchy across the Channel in France. With his father recently dead, and the rest of his relatives believing him killed in the war, Ross's return astonishes all. And thus begins the Poldark saga...


Original broadcast date
1977-05-08

Cast	Characters
Robin Ellis	Ross Poldark
Angharad Rees	Demelza
Clive Francis	Francis Poldark
Jill Townsend	Elizabeth Poldark
Ralph Bates	George Warleggan
Norma Streader	Verity Poldark
Richard Morant	Dr. Enys
Judy Geeson	Caroline Penvenen
Frank Middlemass	Charles Poldark
Nicholas Selby	Nicholas Warleggan
Paul Curran	Jud
Jonathan Newth	Captain Blamey
Donald Douglas	Captain Malcolm McNeil
Milton Johns	Matthew Sanson
Ralph Nossek	Pascoe
John Forbes-Robertson	Dr. Choake
Tilly Tremayne	Ellen
John Baskcomb	Nat Pearce
Sheelah Wilcocks	Mrs. Tabb
Forbes Collins	Zacky Martin
Stuart Doughty	Jim Carter
Gillian Bailey	Jinny Martin
Christopher Benjamin	Sir Hugh Bodrugan
Cynthia Grenville	Constance Bodrugan
Stefan Gates	Geoffrey Charles Poldark
Philip Madoc	Sir Henry Bull
Adrian Shergold	Travis
Pip Miller	Paul Daniel
Cherry Morris.	Mrs. Halse

Credits

Producer: Morris Barry
Director: Paul Annett, Christopher Barry, Kenneth Ives

Intro
POLDARK/Episode 1/Intro by Alistair Cooke

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we begin a new series, called Poldark, based on the four novels of Winston Graham. It runs to sixteen weeks–episodes–and I can only say that now is the time for the party to settle in to a spate of loving, dueling, poaching, smuggling, wenching, and marrying,--not to mention banking and copper mining. Copper mining plays a big part in this story because we are in the county of Cornwall in England at the end of the eighteenth century.

I don't suppose today's tourists visit the copper mines, which are abandoned, but the Greeks and the Romans knew about them and at the end of the eighteenth century copper and tin were the main sources of wealth in a county that is otherwise practically treeless--barren but very beautiful. Those of you who have been there may have noticed those strange cones of pyramids on the horizon–they are China Clay deposits.

Maybe we should try to pin Cornwall down on the map. When I was a boy we were told that the map of Britain was that of a pig with a man on its back and it comes out very roughly like this [Cooke draws]. The trunk is England, with his very long head– Scotland. The pig's face is Wales. And here–what they call West Country–which goes from Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and here is Cornwall–the very end here is the tip of the island–Lands' End.

So we are in Cornwall, then, the end of the eighteenth century just at the close of the American Revolutionary War and the surrender of the British forces to George Washington and the Continental Army. The date, as any handy schoolboy will tell you, is 1783. And our hero, Captain Ross Poldark, who has been serving in George III's forces, has come home to Cornwall. He has just landed and is on his way home back to his estate, which has indifferent farming but two copper mines. It's called Nampara. During the War he has heard that his father is no longer alive, but his relatives don't know that he himself is alive. This is not surprising because during the war they didn't have any transatlantic mail service. In fact in this year of 1783, England saw its first domestic mail coach going between Bristol and London.

So we open with Captain Poldark jogging home in a stagecoach to meet and amaze his friends.





The Archive Database | Program History | Poster Gallery | Awards

Home | About The Series | The American Collection | The Archive
Schedule & Season | Feature Library | eNewsletter | Book Club
Learning Resources | Forum | Search | Shop | Feedback


©