Poldark’s Resilience Helped Me Turn Round My Business | Culture | The Guardian
Skip to main content Skip to navigation Close dialogue
1 / 1
Next image Previous image Toggle caption Print subscriptions Search jobs
Sign in
Eur Europe edition UK edition US edition Australia edition International edition
The Guardian - Back to home
The Guardian
News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Show more Hide expanded menu
News
View all News World news UK news Climate crisis Ukraine Environment Science Global development Football Tech Business Obituaries
Opinion
View all Opinion The Guardian view Columnists Cartoons Opinion videos Letters
Sport
View all Sport Football Cricket Rugby union Tennis Cycling F1 Golf US sports
Culture
View all Culture Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage
'The mine became my odd internal shorthand for my practice.'
Illustration: Martin O’Neill
My cultural awakening
Poldark’s resilience helped me turn round my business
By Maysa Hattab
Sat 17 Oct 2026 13.00 CEST
Share
Prefer the Guardian on Google
I
discovered the TV series
Poldark
about a year into a new business, an ill-fitting professional identity, and life in a new city. Having worked for others since dental school, I’d taken possession of a practice the year I turned 30.
The practice needed serious refurbishment. I bought it despite dire warnings that my plans for the building, and the way I wanted to treat patients, couldn’t keep a practice in the black. After months of frigid rooms (the building barely had central heating) and frantic clinics, being constantly reminded I hadn’t yet accrued years of trust like the previous owner, I found myself in the upstairs office at 8pm on a Monday, weeping over a spreadsheet.
I approached Poldark with low expectations, seeking an old-fashioned escapist release. I could retreat into romantic landscapes, candlelit longing, or stakes much higher than any I’d taken on: shipwrecks, deadly outbreaks (when those were still the stuff of fiction), injustice and heartbreak. Debbie Horsfield’s glowing 2015 adaptation of the novels turned the melodrama dials high enough to engage a frazzled end-of-day brain which couldn’t grasp a plot for much longer than 20 minutes.
At first, it didn’t disappoint on the escapism front: operatic passions, shimmering violins, tumbling curls and terrible choices abounded. But later, and with no small sense of ridiculousness, I saw parallels to my business everywhere. In Ross Poldark’s stubborn refusal to accept defeat, reopening his family’s derelict copper mine and rebuilding his home despite a chorus advising him to walk away. I saw them in his cousin and rival Francis’s jaundiced self-pity, both men brought low by market forces. Rocks fall, mines flood and people falter, and even doing all you should can’t mitigate failure.
While Ross sublimated his regrets into sweaty labour, I poured my own into trying to be the most accommodating boss I could. Soon, “the mine” became my odd internal shorthand for the practice: for a recruitment rollercoaster, endless building work and countless small disasters.