Poldark, Agatha Christie, and men without shirts

The Binge — Jessica Zafra

TWENTY YEARS AGO, viewers of the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice gasped as Mr. Darcy, played by Colin Firth, took an impromptu dip in the lake and emerged with his white shirt dripping. It appeared that Darcy, overheated from thoughts of Lizzie Bennet, needed a cold bath. Sacrilege! Ten percent of the audience reached for their copies of Jane Austen to check if the snooty swain had indeed gone swimming, and then fired off angry letters to the Beeb about taking liberties with the text. Ninety percent were aflutter over drenched Darcy, and for the next two decades the mere mention of Colin Firth in a wet shirt was enough to send a certain kind of lady reaching for the smelling salts.

Maeve Dermody and Aidan Turner in And Then There Were None

My question is: Whyyy. Firth is lovely, of course, but he didn’t become hot until well into his 40s, when he starred in A Single Man as a gay man so bowled over by grief that he could only wear perfect white shirts by Tom Ford. That shirt of his from Pride and Prejudice has nothing on the magic kamison (chemise) of “Mother” Lily Monteverde (To make a bold star, just add water). Even when it was soaked it must’ve been lined with kevlar because we saw nothing. He did not have abs, pecs, the ripped torso that is a requirement for today’s sex symbols. Somehow Darcy’s snootiness was interpreted as sexy, and the viewers’ imagination filled in the rest.

Last year, reviewers announced that a successor to Colin Firth had been found at last, probably to Mr. Firth’s relief because it can’t be easy to have an Oscar for playing the King of England, and still have older ladies trying to douse you with water to relive that P&P moment. The new edition is Aidan Turner, the Irish star of the British costume drama series Poldark. Based on the historical novels by Winston Graham, Poldark is about an army officer who returns to Cornwall from the American Revolutionary War to find his father dead, his estate in ruins, and his fiancee engaged to his cousin. Ross Poldark decides to restore his property, including an abandoned tin mine, and grapples with one melodramatic twist after another.

At first glance I thought Turner was David Walliams, the star of Little Britain, with better hair and more eyebrow action. (I never saw Being Human, where Turner played the vampire.) Adapted by Debbie Horsfield, directed by Edward Bazalgette and Will McGregor, Poldark is madly in love with its hero: when he’s not smouldering, he’s tossing his locks in slow motion against a picturesque backdrop. In the second episode I realized where I’d seen Aidan Turner before: he was Kili, the hot dwarf in The Hobbit trilogy, the one so appealing that Tauriel the elf preferred him to Legolas (Orlando Bloom). Legolas! I’m pretty sure that’s not in Tolkien, either, but that seems to be the hallmark of the chosen hot one: they’re allowed to take liberties with the text.

And then Ross Poldark strips off his clothes and takes a swim in the sea. Clearly, this is not your granny’s BBC drama anymore. Scarcely has one’s eyeballs recovered from this sculptural vision, when Poldark decides to pick up a scythe and clear some grass. With no shirt. Did Cornish farmers in the 18th century do so much topless gardening? By this time I stopped paying attention to the plot, which is crammed with romantic tensions involving Poldark’s ex-fiancee and his current love, the former urchin Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson); nasty schemes from Poldark’s business competitors including his own relatives; and pestilence. These are all just excuses for Poldark to smolder and flex his muscles, often at the same time. The second season of Poldark, consisting of 10 episodes, will air in the fall.

Aidan Turner is the hero Ross Poldark in the British costume drama series Poldark.

Last year I noted that the long-running ITV detective series Marple and Poirot had ceased production after the BBC acquired the rights to the Agatha Christie library. The first product of this acquisition is the adaptation of And Then There Were None, which is considered by many to be Agatha Christie’s masterpiece. The three-part miniseries bears little resemblance to the comforting country house mysteries we’ve come to associate with Poirot and Marple. It is darker, more violent, more ponderous, and there is no cuddly detective to restore order in the end.

Eight people receive invitations to an island off the coast of Devon from a Mr. and Mrs. U. N. Owen. When they get there, the mysterious Owens are not around, but there are two servants (Noah Taylor and Anna Maxwell Martin) attending to them. The house guests are played by Maeve Dermody, Douglas Booth, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, Burn Gorman, Toby Stephens, Tywin Lannister I mean Charles Dance, and Aidan Turner, and it is fairly obvious whom we’re rooting for to survive.

The bedrooms contain a framed nursery rhyme — “Ten Little Soldier Boys,” a grisly countdown of death by poisoning, disembowelment, and so on. In the dining room is a set of 10 soldier figurines which will soon start disappearing. Then the manservant puts on a record which accuses each guest of murder. I don’t know about you, but at that point I would’ve run screaming out of the house. Conveniently, there is a storm and these strangers are stranded with each other.

Before long they start dying one by one, and no one suggests that they all stay in one room to watch each other. However, at some point they search the rooms, giving Aidan Turner an excuse to take off his clothes. I am not making this up. So he’s leaning against the door, smouldering so hard I feared the wallpaper would combust, clad only in a towel so you can count his abs and slice your retina on his hip cleft. He goes on wearing just the towel long after the search is over, and all I can say is, Five stars for the Beeb! I have not read the Agatha Christie source material, and I strongly doubt that she wrote the towel scene, but who cares. Cover your granny’s eyes, this may kill her.

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