skip to main content

Viewer fury over 'appalling' Poldark scene

Updated / Tuesday, 25 Oct 2016 07:08
The makers of the show have defended the scene
The makers of the show have defended the scene

Viewers and campaigners have hit out at BBC One's Aidan Turner-starring drama Poldark after what they have described as a rape scene in Sunday night's episode.

The episode of the period drama saw Poldark, played by Dublin actor Turner, arrive unannounced at the house of his former fiancée Elizabeth, played by Heida Reed.

After Poldark kicks in the door and demands that Elizabeth cancels her wedding to his enemy, George Warleggan, he is told to leave.

Heida Reed and Aidan Turner in the highly controversial scene

He then takes her face in his hands and forcefully kisses her. Elizabeth pushes him away and tells Poldark she loves George. He then forcefully kisses her again and looks at the bed. 

"You will not dare," says Elizabeth. "You will not dare." "I would Elizabeth," replies Poldark. "I would and so will you."

Poldark then pushes Elizabeth on to the bed and at this point it appears that she changes her mind. 

Sarah Green, co-director at charity End Violence Against Women in the UK, told the Press Association: "It is definitely portrayed very much as a rape.

"The female character says 'no' and there are also non-verbal signs. She is moving away from him and pulling away from him. There is lots of stuff that is ambiguous."

She added: "The directors have done something really ambiguous. It is a really appalling message, which is they have made the representation of non-consensual sex ambiguous by making her appear to change her mind."

Asked why she thought this was the case, she replied: "The problem the producers have found, because this character is extremely popular, they can't represent him as that, they can't represent him as doing something criminal."

Poldark consultant Andrew Graham, whose father Winston wrote the original novels on which the show and 1970s TV series have been based, said: "There is no 'shock rape' storyline in the novels. To say so is to misconstrue my father's text. The BBC has cut nothing and [production company] Mammoth Screen's portrayal of these scenes is entirely true to my father's writing.

"To be more precise - in the novel Warleggan, the point of departure for the relevant scene is indeed consistent with the potential for rape. But what then actually happens is not described but is left entirely to one's imagination.

"The only way to judge what my father intended is to read the novels as a whole. Doing so it becomes clear, from earlier scenes as well as from Elizabeth's immediate reactions and later mixed emotions, that what finally happened was consensual sex born of long-term love and longing.

"It was, as Aidan Turner has put it, 'unfinished business emotionally'."

The show's writer, Debbie Horsfield, said no two readers would picture the scene on the printed page in the same way.

"However, as programme makers, we needed to decide what the audience would actually see. And, as far as possible, to bring to life what the original author intended the scene to depict.

"We were fortunate to have Winston Graham's son Andrew as our consultant on the series so we were able to clarify with him what his father's intentions for this scene were. What you saw on screen is consistent with what we believe those intentions to have been."

Here is a selection of responses from social media:

More stories on

Read Next