Poldark

Granted, this is no 'Downton Abbey', but it is moving slower than a summer's day crosstown bus at noon on 34th Street, before bus lanes.  Maybe it's really aimed at chics and I'll never get it. Or, maybe it is because it is post-American Revolution Cornwall, England and there are candles and horses everywhere. The props are great, but the lighting can't be unless the sun is shining.

Demelza, now Ross's wife, after picking flowers, yes picking flowers, wonders why he isn't home yet. Well, for one thing lady, I can tell you, he's not stuck in traffic on a horse. There are no horse traffic jams in Cornwall.

Ross made an honest woman of Demelza after a night of love making. There will be no little out-of-wedlock cherubs paddling around that dirt floor. But does he really love her? Or, is she his good-time girl to show spite to stuffy conventions? Personally, I think he really loves her, just not that goopy kind. And we've yet to see it in the plot.

She admits to Verity (these people have strange names), a female cousin of Ross's, that she knows she pleases Ross. "I'm good abed" she tells the blushing Verity. She loves him, but obviously she's not sure if it's really love in return, or just some rolls in the feathers. On this, we'll see more.  But very slowly, I'm sure.

There is one action scene where Demelza gets furious at Judd, the worthless manservant who has just filched one of her pies before anyone else has had a chance to eat it. A baker scorned is a tough cookie, and Judd's no fighter. Demelza's speed catches up to Judd in a hurry, and there is a takedown in the yard. Ross has to separate his wife from Judd before she pounds his skull into the dirt over a pie. She's a feisty lass, that one.

But Goddamn it, that scenery! After taking in another episode I fell like I should be checking flights to Heathrow and making real plans for the summer.

Demelza is a work in progress, and Verity is there to teach her dancing, place settings, and how to hold a fan in front of her face and look demurely out from behind it. Of course they go shopping together, so you can guess the transformation that comes about in clothes.

But it's tough watching even an hour's worth of this show in one sitting. I was only able to absorb the last watched episode halfway through before turning it off and heading for Miss Phryne Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

Different era, and Phryne has fizz.

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