Wuthering Heights tonight

[Corporalcornsillk]

Very excited for this! Anyone else?

The ending is a bit trite, but younger Cathy and Hareton's relationship is not the grand passion of Cathy and Heathcliff and is less emotionally exciting, but it's more moderate, more civilised and destined to be happy. There is the suggestion in the book that the ghosts of C&H are left to roam the moor together - so the ghostly pair looking smilingly out of the window upon the young lovers is a bit trite, agreed, but a lot easier to film!

Didn't see the second half of this, but in the book the fact that Cathy and Hareton end up together is meant to round off the circle - ie Cathy ends as an Earnshaw (Cathy Linton/Heathcliff/Earnshaw), just as her mother started life (Catherine Earnshaw/Linton). In the book it makes perfect sense, but probably feels very rushed in a TV adaptation. There is a bit at the end of the book where a young lad sees Heathcliff (who has died, but I don't remember it being suicide) and a young woman up on the moor, possibly as ghosts, but it ends with the narrator noting how peaceful their graves are.

Yes VGL, I don't recall Heathcliff blowing his brains out. In the book I think he dies through self-neglect since he cannot eat or sleep but consumed by thoughts of / haunted by Cathy, but haven't read it for a good 10 yrs so would need to double check.

Hmm, I can't remember how he dies either. I thought they pulled off a really good insight into Heathcliff's character.

He dies of neglect as he's left the window open for her and the chilly air finishes him off.

he most definitely shot himself in the head in this version

The ENTIRE point was that he died of a broken heart/self neglect. Him shooting himself just shows how little the adaptors understood the story. How on earth ITV managed to turn one of the most intense, beautiful, well-written books in English into some stupid simple idiot fodder I will never understand. At least they didn't fall into the mistake of making the characters too nice, but that is about all that can be said for it. Meh.

PS my DPs version of heathcliffs cause of death is that he willed himself to death, as he had willed everything else in his life.

Kate Bush had a better interpretation than ITV

We recorded this and so only caught up last night.

I thought it was very watchable. I haven't read the book though but can understand the frustrations of those who have, being annoyed about the ending.

It is annoyng when a book you love isn't prtrayed accurately on screenl; although in my ignorance I thought the shooting seemed quite plausible.

It's a shame they simplified the ending in that case because the programme was being (imo) quite successfully subtle. I think we would have sufficiently understood about the neglect part if they'd ended it that way. In any event dying from a chill or comsumption seems to have been the favoured way to go in those days.

Dh and I were getting pretty mixed up at one point what with some characters having the same or similar names but we enjoyed it.

Yes! agree about Cathy being boss eyed! The Heathcliff actor put me in mind of Mark Lamarr though - dh said 'he's an 1850's throwback..'

rofl at your dh tsar

I thought Tom Hardy was brilliant as Heathcliff but I thought he was the image of Marco Pierre-White,it was really distracting!

In the book, Heathcliff just stops eating too. Nelly puts food outside his door every day and he just stops eating it doesn't he?
That and leaving the windows open all the time did for him.

This production ok - the Beeb have got to do it next though. The adverts ruined it for me.

Thought Tom Hardy was good... but.. he reminded me a bit of Steve Coogan doing Paul Calf at times though...

He's rather delicious in that Many faces clip though, yummy...

I always had the impression he was tormented to death - by his passion for Cathy, all consuming sense of doom, being let down and his quest for revenge - and eventually just gave up fighting it. Shooting himself seemed a cop out.

I quite enjoyed the first episode but felt that they just raced through the second episode to get it over and done with - it was like watching something being fast forwarded. The cast overall was pretty good but Tom Hardy just didn't do it for me at all I'm afraid. I think Richard Armitage would make a fab Heathcliff though!

No, dittany - they didn't. They did show him shagging her though, which I'm quite sure isn't in the book.

The thing that annoyed me a bit about this production was that they made some little changes which were I'm sure just changes for the sake of it. Was the change to the beginning really better than Emily Bronte's..? They might just as usefully have done things her way (with Lockwood etc) but someone felt they knew better than her...

has there ever been a decent film or series of it?