Poldark

Monday

Joe Wicks: the Body Coach

Channel 4

7:10pm

The deal between BBC One and Agatha Christie Productions Ltd follows the critical success of 2015’s Christmas drama And Then There Were None, adapted by Sarah Phelps and starring Poldark’s Aidan Turner.

Fearless is a contemporary thriller about Emma Blunt, a solicitor with a reputation for defending lost causes. Starring Peaky Blinders actor Helen McCrory in the lead role, the show is described as "in the crash zone where law and politics collide.”

"The so-called War on Terror has put serious stress on the ordinary workings of the law. National security justifies all sorts of police and state over-reach – and the great majority of us are prepared to accept this," said Harbinson, who was a soldier before turning his hand to writing TV dramas.

Age Before Beauty is set in a family-run Manchester beauty salon and explores the modern fascination with staying young.

The series follows Bel, wife of Wesley for 25 years, who has spent the last two decades raising their twins. Now that the twins have left to go to university, Bel is left trying to fill that void.

Her brother-in-law and best friend, Teddy, asks her to step in and rescue their family's struggling beauty salon.

The second series of Poldark has yet to air on television, returning to BBC1's prime Sunday night slot this autumn, but the programme's makers have already been given the go ahead for a third.

Series one was watched by 9million viewers in 2015, and received much publicity alongside the UK general election. “People were asking ‘Where is the Ross Poldark of our time, where is our natural leader?’ Who could have predicted that?” said writer Debbie Horsfeld at an RTS event in April. 

Reviving a much-loved drama series from a less competitive and less knowing TV era was never going to be easy. But everything fell into place for the team that resurrected the swashbuckling period romance Poldark, originally a big hit for BBC One in the mid-1970s.

Even the notoriously unpredictable Cornish weather played ball – and the show went on to spark a media sensation when the rebooted Ross Poldark took his top off.

Damien Timmer, Managing Director of Mammoth Screen, who made the series, suggested it was the period detail and how audiences could relate to the characters that appealed to viewers.

“Those 18th century characters, those 18th century costumes…there was something so relatable about it.

“There’s something about the show’s humanity, the way Debbie [Horsfield] wrote the characters and the actors played them, felt very truthful.” Timmer said at the RTS event, Poldark: Anatomy of a Hit.

As the cost of failure in TV gets ever higher, particularly in drama, it is no surprise when commissioners turn to the past to fill tomorrow’s schedules. Some of these second-life shows become huge hits.

Poldark returned from 1975 to score as one of the biggest new dramas of 2015. Some reboots, such as Doctor Who, become such an established part of the TV landscape that it’s hard to believe they ever went away. Others, such as ITV’s revival of Stars in Their Eyes last year, misfire.