I've been watching it.  Phil Davies is great - usually steals the scenes he is in!  

The scenery isn't the only eye candy either: there seems to be an obligatory shirtless scene for Aiden Turner in every episode!

I haven't actually read Poldark, but I've enjoyed other Winston Graham books.

I haven't had the time to watch the other episodes yet,  but I am going to, most probably tomorrow (after Broadchurch series 2, which will be broadcast from Monday).
I am perfectly willing to believe that this series holds quite a lot of promises, and cannot wait to watch the next episodes.

-Lily

I watched the first ep last night but I was sooo tired and nearly fell asleep, so I'm not sure I was taking it all in. Might have to watch it again on iview. Looks good, especially the scenery. I would visit Cornwall again if I could, it's stunning. Aidan Turner is great too, but I keep waiting for his fangs to pop out!

I'm sorry, I'm late posting here, but loved the finale (I do love a good cry).   I'm so glad that they're doing another series.   I'm used to cliffhanger endings with Sherlock so I can cope with that!  I've grown quite fond of the characters now and want to follow their stories. 

I can't decide whether to read the books or not.  I don't want to be worrying too much about what has been done differently in the series.

  Putrid throat - what was it?  Diphtheria? Scarlet fever?  I wondered if it wasn't possible to hire somebody who had recovered from it (and had immunity) to nurse sufferers, rather than take the risk ... did Demelza know that she was risking her child's life by going there?  Did they just know less about disease then and it didn't occur to them?  Wouldn't the doctor have been better staying away too?  It made me think of the Ebola crisis.  It seemed such a hard life in those days, even for the landowners - all of them seemed to be in debt and struggling.  Only the bankers were doing well!

PBS just started showing Poldark in the US last Sunday.  I've been eagerly waiting for it because I loved the 1970s version with Robin Ellis and I've read most of the books.  (Just found out the latest was published in 2002 and I haven't read that since I didn't know it existed.) 

However, I wasn't thrilled with Ep 1.  It was too truncated and there are way too many shots of people riding a horse or walking along the cliff edge by the sea.  And the way the camera kept closing in on the scar on Poldark's face was annoying.  But, the atmosphere and production design were great!

I was curious if any scenes were cut from the American broadcast and I discovered that, yes, unfortunately, about six minutes were deleted.  So I found a way to watch the British version online and I liked it better the second time around. 

The show has grown on me.  I just finished watching Ep 5.  The pace has picked up and I was hooked after Ep 3.  The plot is just as familiar but more condensed than the original TV version.  It would be interesting to watch the first version again.

Here's an article about the show from the Wall Street Journal:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-merits-the-remake-of-tvs-poldark-1435179972