‘Poldark’ Season 5 WON’T be based on one of Winston Graham’s original novels

The writer of the BBC’s Poldark has confirmed that the new season will tell mostly an original story.

The hit Cornish period drama series launched in March 2015, based on the series of historical novels by Winston Graham.

It was announced last month that Season 5 will be the show’s last.

The show has so far adapted the first seven books in the English author’s 12-part saga.

Season 4, which aired in the UK earlier this year, was based on the seventh book, The Angry Tide.

However, there is a time jump of 10 years between the end of that novel and the start of the eighth, The Stranger from the Sea.

Poldark showrunner and writer Debbie Horsfield has now revealed that Season 5 will be set during that gap, rather than picking up the story 10 years later.

She explained: “In The Stranger from the Sea Winston Graham made many references to developments that happened in the ‘gap’ years. Much can also be inferred.

“There are, of course, also historical events and people of the time, both in Cornwall and in London.

“Series 5 will draw on all of these to follow the lives of the Poldarks, George Warleggan, the Enyses, and the Carnes in this intervening period.”

Winston Graham’s son Andrew, who acts as a series consultant on behalf of the Winston Graham Estate, has said that he approves of the plan.

He commented: “No-one can know what my father would have felt about the forthcoming series, let alone what he might have written.

“However, Debbie Horsfield has demonstrated such an extraordinary affinity with his work and shown such remarkable skill in bringing his Poldark characters to the screen that we know we are in safe hands. Indeed, without her, the Estate would not have agreed to Series 5 in this form.”

Season 4 is currently airing in the USA at 9/8c on Sunday nights on Masterpiece on PBS.

The first three seasons of Poldark are available to buy on DVD now.

Season 5 is filming now in Cornwall and Bristol, and will be broadcast in the UK next summer on BBC One.