Episode Recaps

Beecham House is so frustrating precisely because it should be good. On paper, it’s a story that hasn’t really be done before, set in a period we rarely get to see in shows like this. In actuality, however, it’s a trope-filled retread with tremendously dull storytelling, generally unlikeable characters and a chaotic plot that is so messy I can’t even summarize it easily.

New Masterpiece period drama Beecham House is stunning to look at. The sets are lush, the costumes are beautiful and the world of late eighteenth-century Delhi leaps to life onscreen.

Unfortunately, the show’s beautiful veneer is forced to cover over a multitude of cracks.

As Belgravia continues, everyone's secrets boil ever closer to the surface in an hour that serves largely as a holding pattern for the revelations to come. 

As World on Fire continues, the phony war is over, and a threatening future demands courage and good grace, both on the battlefield and at home.

After a premiere installment that spent most of its time setting up the framework for the rest of the season through flashbacks, Belgravia’s second hour is much more the show we thought this series would be. It’s dramatic, soapy and full of characters lying and behaving snottily to one another while wearing lovely dresses. Basically, it's everything you wanted last week.

Fear, disruption, and loss across Europe. Everything is changing as Warsaw falls and our characters face hard decisions in the second episode of World on Fire. 

The fallout from Georgiana’s abduction continues this week on an action-packed Sanditon that pretty much leaves us all wondering how in the world all of this story is going to get wrapped up in two episodes

Previously on Poldark: After five years and over forty episodes, the story of Ross Poldark and friends is finally coming to an end. For now, anyway. Oh, and also Ross is also currently pretending to commit treason, because reasons. It’s hard to explain. If you’ve missed something, we’ve got recaps of every episode, including last week’s that set all this up.

This is it, the end of an era.

Here’s the thing. I’m choosing to remember Poldark for all the reasons I loved it prior to this moment, because this finale is…well, it’s a lot of things, and definitely not all of them good. In fact, it’s pretty much a perfect microcosm of everything that’s ever gone wrong with the series and a bunch of the stuff it got right, all crammed into a fifty-two-minute installment.

Previously on Poldark: Ned Despard is executed on trumped up treason charges after a high drama trial that saw Ross passionately defend his friend and Dwight imply he was brain damaged. Back in Cornwall, Terrible Tess Trigedden is busy throwing herself at Sam Carne because it looked like he might marry that nice Rosina for a hot second and she can’t allow anyone to have joy. And George Warleggan decides that it’s fine to try marry a girl who’s name he barely knows simply because he hates his stepson. (If you need more details, our recap of Episode 6 is right here.)

Well, if you thought that Poldark might get back to its swoony period drama roots following the execution of Ned Despard last week, you got your wish. In what feels like the worst way possible. Instead of reminding us why we care about all these characters with just a couple of hours left until we say goodbye to them forever, Poldark’s penultimate episode seems determined to make us actively dislike virtually every one of them in the series’ final moments.

Previously on Poldark: Ned gets arrested as a result of a complicated plan between George, Racist Slave Trader Hansen and that random evil guy Ross thinks is his friend. which basically involved getting him drunk and letting him rant against the government around town at top volume until someone from the government notices. George gives a racist speech in Parliament arguing in favor of slavery. And Morwenna keeps sneaking off to visit her child at his grandmother’s and only realizes this is a bad idea when Drake kidnaps him in an attempt to make her happy. But, hey, at least they finally get romantic after she bids the child a tearful goodbye forever. More details and thoughts can be found at last week’s recap.

For anyone who has done a five-minute Wikipedia search on the historical Ned Despard and his wife since this season started – or read our article here on this subject – what happened in this episode won’t be terribly surprising. But if you didn’t know it was coming, it likely felt like a major shock, especially since Poldark makes a point to lean into every wacky escape hijinks trope it can think of to indicate that Ned was maybe going to make some sort of last-minute getaway to safety after all. In some ways, that feels kind of cruel, particularly since the episode goes so far as to have him on the very steps of freedom, Jean Valjean-style, before Ned decides to return to his jail cell in the name of…something.