TV episode review: Wuthering Heights (2009), episode 2, directed by Coky Giedroyc, adapted by Peter Bowker
Finally got around to watching the last of Wuthering Heights. Some rather good acting, I thought, particularly on Heathcliff’s part. I was torn between wanting to kick him in the nuts and wanting to kiss him, which was interesting. In the other version I’ve seen I just had no sympathy for him whatsoever, so well done there! I can even sort of understand why women fancy him. I’m still cautious, because he’s still a raging PSYCHOPATH! Tom Hardy with long hair and cravat, though, wow. Very intense!
Where was I?
I don’t remember what happened in the end of the 1998 version. Well, I remember who died, but not how, so the ending of this had me a bit surprised – while at the same time not. It made a lot of sense for it to end in that way. Gruesome though it is.
It’s a weird story, and not a little incestuous. First, there’s Cathy and her adoptive brother Heathcliff. Cathy marries Edgar Linton (Andrew Lincoln). They have Cathy Jr, so to speak. Edgar Linton’s sister Isabella (Rosalind Halstead) marries Heathcliff, have Linton together. Cousins Linton and Cathy Jr are forced into marriage.
When Linton dies, she ends up with another cousin: Hareton Earnshaw, son of Hindley (Cathy Sr’s brother) and his wife Frances. All the while, Emily Brontë has written one of the most powerful love stories of all time. And that’s the thing. It’s a powerful love story … about mentally deranged people who marry their cousins! Yet we love it. Funny that, really.
Good story, though, and I did enjoy this version more than the 1998 adaptation. Now I just need to read the book and make up my mind as to which one got closest to the source material. I wonder what the story would’ve been like if Cathy and Heathcliffe had just decided to get married and live happily ever after. Sounds like a fanfic just waiting to happen!
