Poldark Season 2: 10 Changes from the Books to the Small Screen

Image via BBC

Poldark adapts the source novels by Winston Graham quite closely, but that doesn’t mean everything is exactly the same. Here are 10 differences.

Before you read much further, you should know that if you haven’t seen the season finale of Poldark, you will certainly want to do so before proceeding. If you need a brief refresher, may we direct you to our recap?

Ever since the first season of Poldark aired, people have called it “remarkably faithful” to the original novels by Winston Graham. Season 1 adapted the first two novels, Ross Poldark and Demelza. Season 2 adapts the two succeeding novels, Jeremy Poldark and Warleggan. With a couple more hours to do it, things feel less rushed overall.

But how does one compress two hefty novels into 10 hours? By cutting some things, shifting the timing of others, and flat-out changing or adding things in for the sake of drama. After going through both Jeremy Poldark and Warleggan, as well as checking back with the PBS version of Poldark’s second season, we’ve listed out 10 differences. There are several more as well — 10 hours to adapt nearly 800 pages, which is on the scale of early seasons of Game of Thrones, means that things do have to be cut— but let’s run through some of the biggest, shall we?