After making a bad mistake last season, Ross Poldark is trying to get back to being just a tormented, moral, good guy again.
But some of the fates are making it difficult for Ross (Aidan Turner, top) as the PBS stalwart Poldark kicks off Season 4 with a two-hour episode Sunday at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings).
He’s also still plagued by his nemesis George Warleggan (Jack Farthing, below), who seems to have all the wind at his rich back.
George remains an obnoxious, arrogant, self-important, and insecure jerk. But he’s got money and power, and he’s married to Elizabeth (Heida Reed), the wife of Ross’s late brother Francis and long-standing flame of Ross himself.
Elizabeth and Ross briefly gave in to their mutual passion last season, which unsurprisingly created serious issues between Ross and his own wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson, top), who loves Ross.
And in fact, Ross loves her. He and Elizabeth had the classic moment of impulsive weakness, which cast a classic cloud of fragility, resentment, remorse, and regret over his marriage.
Turner and Tomlinson do a splendid job conveying those troubles even as Ross and Demelza struggle to put the pieces back together.
For what it’s worth, things are no easier for Elizabeth. As the season begins she is eight months pregnant with what George is convinced is his long-awaited male heir, and more than the standard physical discomforts of pregnancy are weighing on her.
She ultimately makes a dramatic move in the premiere episode, though it doesn’t have the outcome she seemingly hoped it would.
The same can be said for her marriage to George, in which his penchant for control has been wearing ever-thinner as the birth of the heir approaches.
Among other things, it’s clear he intends for the new child to completely supplant Geoffrey (Harry Marcus, left), Elizabeth’s son with Francis.
That scheme nicely leads the show into a charming new subplot. When George decides a governess for Geoffrey would start detaching him from Elizabeth, he hires the teenage Morwenna Chynoweth (Ellise Chappell, above) and that sets her up for a sweet young-love romance with a smitten local fellow she meets while walking on the beach with Geoffrey.
Romance doesn’t always come sweet on Poldark, of course. Beyond the troubles of Ross and Demelza or Elizabeth and George, young Caroline Penvenen (Gabriella Wilde) has to make some tough decisions about Dr. Dwight Enys (Luke Norris).
They’re deeply in love, but he has been disillusioned by things required of a doctor by some elements of the town, so he decided last season to join the Navy.
Since a Naval war with France seems imminent, Caroline fears this could become a high-risk occupation. She’s right.
Elizabeth’s sharp-tongued Aunt Agatha (Caroline Blakiston, right) is still around, praise the Lord, because it would be a different show without her. She’s the only one who can get away with calling George an insufferable jerk every time he opens his mouth.
The show still looks beautiful, between the Cornwall countryside and the British flair for brilliant use of light, landscapes, and shadows.
And in the larger picture, the implication of the title remains accurate: The show focuses on Poldark, a basically decent man who has made at least one lamentable mistake that cost him many character points, but who in the larger picture is more sinned against than sinning.
His refusal to leverage his money and standing into the comfortable life of the rich, at the expense of the less fortunate, has caused his own standing and lifestyle to erode. It has forced him to accept repeated degradations at the hands of George.
Allowing that Elizabeth has been his Achilles heel, he has mostly maintained his moral compass, often at considerable cost.
Like many people who struggle daily with morality, he is also given to brooding and indecision, which understandably can drive his wife crazy.
No matter what he enjoys in material goods or genuine affection, he has no clear path to happily ever after, or even relaxing enough to enjoy what he has now.
He’s a restless soul, and when restless souls are played as well as Turner plays Ross Poldark, we are drawn to watch them.
While Season 4 has a fair number of tense new developments, it also takes time to linger on the people and their land. It’s not action television, and in this era when almost everything else is, Poldark remains a pleasure to watch and savor.