Fans of Winston Graham’s Poldark novels will know that the BBC show is edging towards a big game-changer, as the eighth book features a huge 11-year time jump.

Whether the series will follow suit remains to be seen, but writer Debbie Horsfield has been speaking about what may be in store following the fourth series.

She told Digital Spy: “I know this sounds ridiculous, but we’re not looking ahead to that time-jump at the moment. We only think of one series at a time and we are so in the midst of series four.

“I’m just doing the final production re-writes to the series four scripts and we start shooting in September… and then obviously, at some point over the next six months, the BBC will let us know whether a series five is on the cards. We may not know that for quite some time.”

Star Aiden Turner recently proposed that, though it’s very likely that a fifth series would happen, that could well be the last outing for the character.

Horsfield continued: “This is what we go on to explore in series four. In fact, where we end [the third series] isn’t the end of the book. It’s two-thirds of the way through the book.

“It was my suggestion to split three books into two series, rather than doing two books a series, because there’s so much fantastic material in those three books. But it did mean that we have to find an endpoint for series three.”