It’s pistols at dawn when villainous Monk Adderley (Max Bennett) challenges Ross (Aidan Turner) to a duel in this week's Poldark
Tonight’s drama-packed episode starts with Ross and Demelza all loved-up in London – which, in the Poldark world, means disaster is about to strike at any second!
And strike it does, when Ross’ new nemesis Monk Adderley (Max Bennett) takes a shine to Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) at the Warleggans’ masked ball and ends up accosting her, resulting in Ross (Aidan Turner) agreeing to a duel in order to defend his wife’s honour.
‘It was a scary thing for someone to challenge you to a duel in those days,’ says Aidan. ‘It didn’t happen that often and you can’t really turn it down as you lose face and pride, not a great look in the day.
'Loading those guns would have been difficult and they were really inaccurate so you could get the bullet anywhere. It was fun to do it on screen but that’s as far as you’d want to take it,’ he says.
For Max, who made his debut as Adderley earlier in this series, the duel scenes proved a baptism of fire as they were filmed on his first day!
‘It was great doing those scenes,’ says Max. ‘Duelling wasn’t legal then. It was done at dawn.'
As Monk and Ross face each other at dawn, shots ring out across London, but whose blood has been spilled?
Meanwhile, a chance quip by Geoffrey Charles about Valentine’s similarity to Ross sends George into a paranoid spin, and Morwenna’s woes deepen…
TV Times rating: *****
