Alas, Poor Scrappy: The viewers' dominant reaction to Elizabeth's death and George's grief over her.
Alternate Character Interpretation: In an interview, Sofia Oxenham wonders if Tess actually has some reading ability before meeting Sam. Sam remarks that she's a fast learner and that could simply be her underplaying her initial skills to impress him or she might be actually using him to learn to read.
Angst? What Angst?: One would expect that Dwight's PTSD would be a major challenge for him and Caroline, but one conversation with Hugh Armitage appears to cure him and the arc is completely abandoned. Repeated in season 4, when instead of dealing with their shared grief over the death of their daughter and Caroline's flight to London the story has them simply move on with life as if the giant angsty elephant in the room doesn't exist.
Arc Fatigue: Drake and Morwenna pine for each other after her marriage for some of series 3 and all of series 4. They get their happy ending in the series 4 finale, but the happiness is one scene compared to a whole season of sad pining.
Base-Breaking Character: Francis is a very flawed character with fans divided on how much sympathy he should get. His many petty, hypocritical, and spiteful actions across series 1 (selling out Ross's Copper partnership, cheating on Elizabeth, constantly palling up to George in spite of his trustworthiness) won him a lot of detractors who feel the many moments the show tries to make the audience feel sorry for him come across as unearned. Still, others feel he's a Jerkass Woobie struggling with his insecurities and feel his growing a spine in series 2, trying to make up for all of his misdeeds, and tragic end serve to make him a dynamic and engaging character.
Best Known for the Fanservice: To those who haven't watched it, Poldark is "that show with the topless guy with a scythe".
Complete Monster: Seasons 3 & 4: Reverend Osborne "Ossie" Whitworth is secretly a lecherous creature who will stop at nothing to satisfy his urgings. Teaming up with George Warleggan to coerce Morwenna Chynoweth into marrying him to spite Drake in lieu of hanging him, he wastes no time getting it on with her in brutal fashion. Eventually, they have a child, John Conan, but he continues to rape her despite Dr. Enys warning him it could kill her eventually, proving to be a hypocrite when the next season he claims to be concerned about John Conan's life. Deprived for a while of satisfaction from Morwenna, Reverend Whitworth bides his time by pursuing an adulterous affair with her sister, Rowella, and helping George bankrupt Pascoe, one of the few remaining moral bankers in Cornwall, by extracting a confession of embezzlement from Pascoe's dying partner, Nathaniel Pearce, and casually cursing both Rowella and Nat the instant their usefulness ends, and is all too ready to resume his abuse of Morwenna at full force.
Creator's Pet: Debbie Horsfield has admitted Drake and Morwenna are two of her favourite characters which many fans felt was the reason they got more screentime in season 3 than their plot warranted.
Crosses the Line Twice: George losing his mind and hallucinating? Tragic. George discovering Drake and Morwenna at Trenwith and demanding they be killed? Scary. Cary completely missing the pair and awkwardly trying to calm George down, thinking it's another hallucination? Oddly hilarious.
Draco in Leather Pants: George Warleggan is a spiteful, cruel man whose actions bring misery to numerous characters. He's also handsome, charismatic, and has just enough sympathetic moments to slide easily into this trope.
Jerkass Woobie: Jack Farthing manages to strike a perfect balance of "we hate him" and "we want to give him a hug" in his performance as George. His reaction to Elizabeth's death and the subsequent Sanity Slippage is genuinely heartbreaking, in spite of all the horrible things he's done.
George has a few potential crossings. In series 2, he slandered Ross as a thief and killer and attempted to have him hanged. If he hadn't crossed it then, in series 4 he attempted to have Sam and Drake hanged along side Jago by spreading false accounts that they assisted in a murder.
Reverend Whitworth, already a despicable pig, crosses it by raping Morwenna almost immediately after his child is born, if earlier piggish moments towards her hadn't already done it.
If Monk Adderly didn't cross it by making unwanted advances on Demelza in Ross's own house, he does so by refusing to consider the matter between him and Ross to be settled when neither is wounded during the duel, resulting in Ross killing him.
Merceron allowing Ned to hang on trumped-up charges may have been despicable, but he well and truly crosses it by having Ross thrown in a mineshaft and left for dead.
Andrew Blamey admits to killing his first wife by accident during a struggle. Keren dies in a similar fashion at the unwitting hands of Mark Daniel.
Demelza spends multiple house parties being beset by unwanted suitors.
George persuades two different men on two separate occasions to seduce or rape Demelza. Neither is successful.
George sends his minions to wreck Drake's smithy twice.
Both Official Couple Ross and Demelza and Beta Couple Dwight and Caroline face the death in infancy of their first daughters.
Romantic Plot Tumor: Dwight/Caroline in series 2 for some, Drake/Morwenna in series 3 and 4 for others.
Seasonal Rot: Season 3 and 4 are commonly argued to be of poorer quality compared to the first two seasons.
Squick: Whitworth sucking a bored prostitute's toes and heartily enjoying it. And every noise and facial expression he makes to signal his apparently insatiable lust.
Tear Jerker: Ned's final conversation with Poldark before his execution the next day in episode 6 of series 5.
Again, Sam's relationship with Emma Tregirls was cut down to a minimum.
Dwight's imprisonment and separation from Caroline could have been milked for drama but ended up taking the backseat to other plots.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Hugh Armitage gets some of this, as while his failing health would make him sympathetic a big problem with him is that he showed romantic interest in Demelza very soon after meeting her. It should be noted that this is the wife of the man who rescued him from imprisonment in France yet he seems to shown little guilt. His continued interest in Demelza throughout his appearance can annoy many viewers, especially as he occasionally seems to desire her to leave her husband and children for him.
Values Dissonance: In the source material, published in the 1950s, it is clear that Ross rapes Elizabeth. Despite efforts to update the scene for a modern audience and portray the sex as consensual in the TV adaption, many viewers still felt uncomfortable with what they considered dubious consent at best.note Per the original script: "Momentarily she struggles, but soon the taste of his mouth on hers, the desire for him which has never been satisfied, asserts itself. She pulls his face toward her."
Most gowns and hair styles featured in the show are hopelessly old-fashioned for the 1790s, until everyone starts wearing classic Regency costumes from one moment to the next, without showing the transition in fashion that took place during the turn of the century.
A lot of Demelza, Elizabeth and Morwenna's maternity gowns are laced quite bizarrely, and in some cases it's painfully obvious that their pregnancies are fake since a) no one during production seemed to take into account that pregnancy often causes a person's breasts to increase in size, meaning the normally slender actresses stay flat as a pancake up top and b) the fake stomachs are positioned far too low down on their abdomens. The result is that it seems as if their stays are actually trying to squeeze their babies out of them, like a tube of toothpaste!
