在这部波达克剧情片中,It is now 1810, the eighteenth-century is but a memory, the war with France, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of British lives and drained the national treasury, plows into its third decade, and in Cornwall, the tragically costly Warleggan-Poldark feud has "cooled to ashes."
In this segment of the series, the children of the aging but far from antiquated Ross and Demelza move onto center stage and it is as much on their lives as those of the now older generation that the plot focuses. Clowance Poldark, oldest surviving daughter of the Nampara household, and her older brother Jeremy, each become fixated upon love interests. Jeremy is infatuated with the gracefully elegant Cuby Trevanion, a young woman from an ancient but impoverished family of the gentry, while the normally sensible Clowance loses her heart to the title character of this volume, the mysterious Stephen Carrington, the "stranger from the sea."
British officer Ross Poldark returns to his native Cornwall after the Revolutionary War after escaping as a prisoner of war. He finds that because he was believed dead, his home has fallen into ruin and his estate has shifted to his mercenary uncle following the death of his father. His uncle has committed to selling the family copper and tin mines to a ruthless local land baron while his former fiancee has agreed to marry his cousin in his absence.
