Weekend's TV preview: It’s decision time for Demelza as Captain Ross gets a romantic poet love rival

Man o’ the sea: Aidan Turner as Captain Ross in Poldark
Mammoth Screen/BBC/PA Wire
Alastair McKay11 June 2018

They don’t mess around on Poldark.

There’s no foreplay, just a straight plunge, and there he is, the hunk unbound, waving-not-drowning in a slow-motion sea of Old Spice and shipwrecked spinsters’ tears.

The waters break and the bold Captain Ross (Aidan Turner) appears in all his beach-ready magnificence; a hunk in trunks, a sexy sea monster, a time-travelling Chippendale with beads of mirrored desire glistening on his chest-wig.

Actually, that’s not all true. Poldark wasn’t wearing trunks. He was wearing britches. Otherwise, the opening scene was the full Daniel Craig, it was Mr Darcy after a month at an ultra-gym, it was the post-feminist Ursula Andress, adrift on the sands of objectification.

Mammoth Screen/BBC

And there we must leave Pseud’s Corner, because Ross is staring at the sun as he fastens his lust-tunic. He is having a vision. There is a sappy man canoodling Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), and the sap is saying “What is love?” It’s a big question.

But the spectre isn’t finished. “A possession to be hoarded, or a blessing to be given away?” Demelza replies with a Hallmark question of her own. “Can I not give him even the smallest piece of my heart?”

Lead: Aidan Turner
Mammoth Screen/BBC

Yes, they’ve had a clearout in Poldark. The story has been waxed to its hormonal essence. It’s a bumpy love affair in which Ross loves Demelza, OK. But he also has a twinkle for Elizabeth (Heida Reed), who has a better pout but is hitched to George, who couldn’t be more devilish if he had a forked tail poking from the arse of his topcoat and a “666” tattoo on his weaselly brow. And Demelza? Poor, simple Demelza wants to love Ross but she has started to indulge the affections of the sap Hugh, who writes withering poetry to her, and is dying, or going blind, or both.

In other news, the price of grain is off the scale, and as evil George notes: “The vulgars are full of sound and fury.” Signifying a possible move into politics.

Meanwhile, in Essex, Germaine Greer has let a film crew watch her being Germaine Greer. Clare Beavan’s documentary will work as an obituary when the time comes but for now it’s a fascinating look at an unrelenting provocateur. Possibly, the film is cheekier than it first appears. A passage about Greer’s time as a rock groupie includes her denying she was one, then some old film of her saying she was, then a passage in which she eulogises the beauty of Robert Plant’s hair. Is she even a feminist? “Equality is a profoundly conservative aim,” Greer says now. “It would change nothing.” And even while professing to admire Beyoncé, she asks: “Why’s she always got to be naked?” before a demolition of the #MeToo protesters at the Golden Globes, who “wore black as a sign of opting out of some fantasy or other” but “had their tits hanging out”. The young Greer was no stranger to nudity. “Remember,” she says, “I showed my anus in a much more revolutionary way.”

Pick of the day

Carnage - Sky One, Sunday, 8pm

It has been action from start to finish in this extraordinary contest, which mixes Wacky Races and Robot Wars and dresses it up in the post-apocalyptic style of Max Max.

In this week’s grand final, the four remaining teams battle it out, and most of the fun will doubtless come from the show’s unself=conscious pursuit of thrills. Ex-cricketer Freddie Flintoff holds the show together with his dry wit and his everyman appeal, even if he does look like a man who missed the last bus to Barnsley and ended up in the desert by mistake.

Carnage: Freddie Flintoff, Lethal Bizzle and Vick Hope present
Sky

MC Lethal Bizzle and co-presenter Vick Hope manage to walk the post-apocalyptic walk as they encourage the teams to give their all in the South African desert.

The finalists are Team Hellraiser, Cunning Stunts, Team NFG and last week’s winners, Death Cult 1, and all four will doubtless embrace the show’s promise to provide absolute annihilation as they batter their souped-up vehicles around the various stunt courses.

Commentator Colin Murray summed up the show’s appeal last week when he exclaimed: “This is anarchy! This is stupid! I love it!”

Screen time

The Staircase - Netflix

Originally released in 2004 but now updated, this true-crime documentary series has been hailed as the Citizen Kane of the genre.

It follows the case of crime author Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife Kathleen in 2001. He had alerted the authorities about her death, saying that she had fallen down the stairs. But investigators found lacerations on her head, and prosecutors claimed that she had been battered to death with a poker.

They also started to look into the death, almost 20 years earlier, of a family friend, Elizabeth Ratliff. From here the story gets complicated, and — keeping things vague to avoid any spoilers — there were significant developments in 2011 and 2017.

What to Watch/Capital Conversation - Sunday, London Live, from 5pm

Ahead of the shirtless Poldark returning to screens, Ellise Chappell and Harry Richardson from the cast discuss the new fourth series and which one of them isn’t a natural blacksmith.

Then in Capital Conversation host Michael Hayman meets Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of M&S.

W1A - London Live, 9pm

We’re all so busy these days, juggling podcasts we’ll definitely get around to listening one of these days, there’s no time to stare at a BBC logo comprised of three letters: One. It’s so... wordy.

That’s the conclusion drawn by Siobhan Sharpe (Jessica Hynes) in the first of this self-flagellating double-bill when her team of trend-hunters and PR ninjas are tasked to redesign the BBC logo. What if, to acknowledge how time-poor we all are, the logo didn’t have any letters at all?

While that fiasco is proudly unfurled as a visionary step, the in no way derivative series, Britain’s Tastiest Village, edges closer to commission so it can, if not inform, educate, or entertain, then at least it can be on telly.

Catch up

Scotland 78: A Love Story - BBC iPlayer

Believe it or not, there was a time when Scotland used to qualify for major football tournaments. In 1978, when — as the song put it — “England didnae qualify”, manager Ally MacLeod’s squad travelled to Argentina with ludicrously high hopes. He declared: “I think a medal will come” — meaning Scotland would finish in the top three — “and I pray and hope it is the gold one.” John MacLaverty’s documentary looks at the naive insanity of those days.

Atlanta - Sunday, BBC2, 10pm

One of the great things about Donald Glover’s comedy about rapping is how it defies expectations. The first of tonight’s episodes, B.A.N., dispenses with the show’s regular format and becomes instead an episode from a current affairs show in which rapper Paper Boi is forced to defend himself against claims of transphobia after sending some offensive tweets about Caitlyn Jenner.

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