It was the year of our Lord 1783.
Cornish men had dark eyes and high cheekbones, and lived in stone farmhouses near the coast where heaving seas dashed foaming spray on the fatal shore.
Cleavage and bosoms also heaved, as plunging necklines, corsets and potent emotions made jelly of the hearts of rich and poor alike, 'neath skies heavy with grey and threatening cloud.
It was the time of Poldark.
A time when men knew how to call each other ''Sir''.
''You doubt the justice of our cause, Sir?'' an English soldier asks as the latest television adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark novels begins in Virginia, in the American Civil War.
''And what could that be, Sir?'' Poldark responds.
Sir - now that is a way to both begin and end a sentence with a sense of dignity and decorum, something the feckless young of today could learn if they would devote themselves to historical costume dramas, and perhaps amateur theatre, rather than wasting their lives on university educations and promising careers.
The original adaptation of Poldark played on New Zealand television in the mid-1970s.
I can dimly remember somebody regularly saying ''Arrrrr, Cap'n Poldark'', but little else before being forced to go to bed on a school night.
The latest begins on Prime at 8.30pm tomorrow.
For those of you who missed the earlier version, Poldark returns from the war to a Cornwall in the grip of recession.
His father has died, his family's land and mines are in ruins, and the love of his life is about to marry his cousin.
Poldark (Aidan Turner, The Hobbit and Being Human) spends a lot of time wearing long capes or greatcoats, and galloping along the moody cliffs above the Cornwall coast.
Poldark is troubled and difficult, but decent, apart from threatening his servants with violence now and then.
His lips are full, red and moist (girls think he's exceedingly sexy), and he toils manfully to bring his barren land back to a fit state to support him and his servants, mostly by picking up heavy rocks and hitting things with a hammer.
After the shock of losing the beautiful and also red moist-lipped Elizabeth to his cousin, he saves a peasant girl from a beating at the local market, and takes her in as a kitchen maid.
Fortunately for the passionate Poldark, as we soon learn, behind the rags worn by the dirty waif is a stroppy flame-haired Cornish beauty, the comely and desirable Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson, Jack the Giant Slayer).
Episode one of the eight-part saga sets the scene for what should be a fun, libidinous romp through 18th-century Cornwall.
Well worth a look.
- Charles Loughrey
