Poldark season 2: Aiden Turner and BBC drama's screenwriter defend controversial 'rape fantasy' episode

'There is no ‘shock rape’ storyline in the novels. To say so is to misconstrue the text'

Poldark (BBC)

Winston Graham's third Poldark novel caused controversy when the titular character raped his former lover, Elizabeth, moments after she revealed her engagement to nemesis George Warleggan.

While never called ‘rape’ in the text, there’s no subtlety in the words Graham uses.

From the third Poldark novel, Warleggan

Elizabeth: “Ross, you can't intend. Stop! Stop, I tell you.”

But he took no further notice. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.  

When the series was adapted by the BBC in the 1970s, the controversial episode was nicknamed the “rape” episode: at the time, there was little outrage over the scene which saw Elizabeth (Jill Townsend) and Ross (Robin Ellis) have sex. The BBC have not made the clip available, but you can watch the build up below.

Before the second series started, newspapers published reports that the scene had been completely ‘axed’ from the new BBC adaptation of the show in order to preserve Poldark as the hero. However, the moment was portrayed on screen, with Aiden Turner’s titular character forcefully throwing Heida Reed’s Elizabeth onto the bed, her character responding passionately.

Fay Maxted, chief executive of the Survivors Trust, an umbrella organisation for rape charities, told The Guardian: “This is some sort of rape fantasy where the man is overcome by his lusty passions and the woman resists but she really wants him after all. It’s a complete rape myth.”

However, Andrew Graham - Winston Graham’s son - has stood by the BBC’s portrayal, saying: “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 [Poldark 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’.”

Speaking to RadioTimes, screenwriter Debbie Horsfield reasoned how book readers are left without exact knowledge of what happened in the scene and they can interpret the moment in a variety of ways. She added that, because of the nature of TV, they need to show what happened, saying: “What you saw onscreen is consistent with what we believe [Graham’s] intentions to have been.”

Speaking to The Sun, Aidan Turner also went on the defensive, saying: “It seems consensual, and it just seems right. He goes to talk. He doesn’t go to commit a crime. They talk and it seems like there is still this spark between them, this unfinished business emotionally. Certainly, that’s how Ross feels. He doesn’t force himself upon her. He is emotionally quite inarticulate. I don’t think he quite understands himself.

“With Elizabeth, he idealised her for so long. He’d have thought about her every day on the battlefields. To come home and not have her, not hold her, not marry her. It was very difficult. He’s absolutely in love with Demelza. Question is, is it possible to be in love with more than one person?

"He’s heavily flawed. He isn’t just this legend who rides in on a horse and feeds the poor. He seems quite real, very proud. We’d almost call him a control freak. He can be quite mean and callous, and single-minded and selfish. It would be boring to play a character who’s just a do-gooder. He makes mistakes and realises them.”

The BBC have yet to comment on the situation, instead referring questions to the production company. Poldark returns at 9pm on BBC1 on Sunday.