Christmas in November: Poldark Coming to DVD

Oh, my...my day was made when I discovered that at long, long last, the first POLDARK series is coming to DVD next March.

TV Shows on DVD had the good word (click the title of this post). It will be out on March 2, 2010, and is already available for preorder at Amazon. The cover art is lovely!

It's also listed at Deep Discount at a substantially lower price.

I had almost given up hope of the show coming out on U.S. DVD. The only reason I hadn't yet bought a Region 2 copy, as I mentioned a few months ago, is concern that some of the episodes released in Britain had been edited.

I'll be able to discard a lot of Beta tapes when this comes out... Hopefully a release of POLDARK II won't be long behind.

POLDARK, which first aired in England in 1975, stars Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees in an exciting tale of adventure and romance, set on the Cornish coast in the late 1700s. Ralph Bates, Jill Townsend, Clive Francis, and Judy Geeson also star.

I first saw the series when it ran on PBS in the late '70s. The show is based on the first four novels of Winston Graham's POLDARK series, which I also raced through during my high school years. Graham wrote the books over a span of several decades, beginning in the 1940s. POLDARK II is based on novels five through seven. There were ultimately twelve books in the series, although unfortunately the later books were never filmed with this cast.

A 1996 TV-movie based on some of the later books, made with a completely different cast, is by all accounts best left forgotten.

More info is available at the Winston Graham and Poldark Literary Society website. There is also an extensive post on Wikipedia, although those who are unfamiliar with POLDARK should be aware it's filled with spoilers.

This is great news for fans of classic British television.

March 2010 Update: More good POLDARK news -- POLDARK II will be released on DVD on September 28, 2010.