When Will Poldark Ride Again?

Prime is soon to unveil a raft of newcomers but there’s still no sign of the latest season of Poldark.

It went to air in the UK on June 10 and draws on the final third of Winston Graham’s sixth Poldark book, The Four Swans and all of book seven, The Angry Tide.

The action of series four will run until the Christmas period of 1799. The next book – The Stranger from the Sea, which is the eighth in the series of 12 – starts in 1810, a leap of more than ten years. This will be the start of series five, which RadioTimes.com revealed is expected to be the final series of the show.

The Independent dubbed the season premiere “Love Island but with more male chest hair” while The Guardian declared: “This barnstorming fourth-series opener brims with passion and incident, politics and social history, some of which may even reflect the reality of the late-18th century.”

Season three premiered July 11, 2017 on Prime but don’t expect to see season four until the end of the month. I’m picking July 31, as the 8.30 Tuesday successor to The Sixties, which would maintain the period drama/doco vibe of the night, with Elizabeth as its lead-in and Knightfall as its lead-out.

In the meantime, Prime will launch six newcomers in the week starting July 14:

Prime Planet: Earth’s Great Seasons (7.30 Sundays)

Andrew Scott celebrates the seasons of Earth and the extraordinary tricks that animals use to survive, beginning with a look at spring. In the UK, it was called Earth’s Seasonal Secrets (The Guardian thought it “a cute, cuddly hour … It was as if some unlucky editor had been told to dig out every cliche in the BBC’s natural history archive and cut and paste them into a summer-themed special that went big on the cute and cuddly and kept the red in tooth and claw to a minimum”).

Prime Presents: Living With Tourette’s (8.30 Sundays)

This eye-opening documentary series reveals the realities of living with Tourette Syndrome, through the inspiring lens of six young Kiwis suffering from the incurable neurological disorder who attend Camp Twitch. It’s an annual event that offers friendship and support to around 100 people with Tourette’s and their families, where the “twitchers” are free to be themselves without anyone judging them.

Life After Footy – Legends of the Pacific (9.30 Sunday)

This exploration of what happens to Polynesian footy legends after they hang up their boots features Sir Michael Jones and Olsen Filipaina.

MacGyver (7.30 Thursdays)

It’s already aired on Sky 5 but this is the first chance to see the reboot’s second season in HD (at least on the Sky platform). In the season premiere, MacGyver and the team search for a Navy SEAL who is believed to be alive in captivity in the Middle East … using a cell phone and soccer ball.

Death in Paradise (8.30 Thursdays)

Season seven opens with the first full case for DI Jack Mooney (Father Ted’s Ardal O’Hanlon): when the fiancée of a billionaire is found dead days before her wedding, all evidence points towards suicide, but Jack is convinced there’s more to the mystery. “There’s no doubt that Ardal brings a different energy than prior leads Kris Marshall or Ben Miller to Death in Paradise, but the majority of long-time fans are certainly warming up to him,” Digital Spy said of its January UK premiere.

The Chase Australia (7.30 Friday)

Channel Seven’s version of the British hit that TVNZ 1 strips weekdays. TVNZ 1 also ran a season of The Chase Australia in primetime over summer two years ago. In Australia, it airs at 5pm.