Filming Begins on Final Season of ‘Poldark’
It’s official: Poldark Season 5 will be the series’ last.
For now, anyway.
Probably this news shouldn’t really shock anyone, given that rumors of the show’s impending end have been swirling around for the past year. But, it’s still a bit depressing to know for sure that it’s all about to be over.
The news was confirmed as part of the BBC announcement that filming is officially under way on Season 5.
And US fans, of course, are still waiting for their turn to see Season 4, which will begin on PBS’ Masterpiece starting September 30.
Calling all #PoldarkPBS fans: Season 5 begins filming this week and, sadly, we can confirm that it will be the final season In the meantime, season 4 is still to come here on MASTERPIECE... Don’t miss the premiere on September 30! (@ETomlinson) pic.twitter.com/B8bPRik9oF
— Masterpiece PBS (@masterpiecepbs) September 10, 2018
Poldark is based on a 12-book series of novels by Winston Graham, and by the time that the show wraps things up, it should have covered the events of about eight of them. Season 5 will adapt The Stranger From the Sea, which itself takes place roughly ten year after the events of the previous novel. So, the show will need to fill in some gaps from the intervening years in order to make the story make sense.
Mammoth Screen executive producer Karen Thrussell did have an interesting comment in her official statement on the series’ end, however.
“At Mammoth we’re all fans of the Poldark books and we hope our audience will continue with us on the next stage of the journey. We are confident that fans of the novels will appreciate the care with which Debbie Horsfield is continuing to adapt Winston Graham’s saga.
This will be the last series in the Poldark chronicle... for now. Who knows what the future may bring.”
Given the significant time jump toward the end of the books, it seems unlikely that either Turner or Tomlinson would be terribly interested in doing a season of Poldark under a lot of aging make up, so this feels like a natural end point for the series in some ways. But, interestingly enough, the later books in Graham’s Poldark series deal largely with the next generation of characters, focusing on the Poldarks’ daughter among other recognizable figures. There’s no reason that there couldn’t be a spin-off or sequel series at some point that adapts those later parts of the story, which ostensibly have less or no need for the current set of cast members to be present.
So perhaps while it’s set to be goodbye to Poldark once Season 5 concludes, that “for now” maybe doesn’t have to mean forever.
How do you feel about the news of Poldark’s impending conclusion? Are you looking forward to Season 4 here in America? And would you watch a second season about the younger characters at some point in the future? Let’s discuss in the comments.
