An extremely handsome production

Variety reviews the upcoming Wuthering Heights miniseries like this:

For those understandably enamored of the 1939 Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon version, this "Masterpiece Classic" retelling of "Wuthering Heights" does offer a few modern compensations, starting with an intense Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, who, along with Charlotte Riley's less-impressive Cathy, occupies the center of Emily Bronte's obsessive love quadrangle. Writer Peter Bowker ("Blackpool") has widened the lens to include the characters' heirs, but the last hour of this 2½-hour production (presented in two unequal parts) lacks quite the wallop that part one delivers once it gets rolling.
The first 15 minutes or so, frankly, is a bit of a muddle, starting with Cathy's grown daughter, Catherine (Rebecca Night), before flashing back to tell the elder generation's story. (It doesn't help that any effort to age the characters through makeup is virtually nonexistent, so the key players look 25 pretty much all the way through, even when they're older.)
Beginning in the late 18th century, Bronte's dark story centers on Cathy and her adopted brother Heathcliff, a poor Gypsy lad, who her blood brother Hindley (Burn Gorman) instantly resents and torments at every turn. Treated like a servant once his father dies, Heathcliff's passion for Cathy is shaken when she is injured and ends up convalescing in the care of the aristocratic Edgar Linton (Andrew Lincoln), who soon proposes to her.
An angry Heathcliff flees, but he returns with a cryptic note on Cathy's wedding day, and reveals himself later, having mysteriously won his fortune. Still powerfully drawn to Cathy and vice versa, he finally weds Linton's sister Isabella (Rosalind Halstead), primarily as an act of spite after learning his beloved is pregnant.
Bowker and director Coky Giedroyc (who also oversaw "Masterpiece's" upcoming "Oliver Twist") capitalize on present-day latitude to incorporate more visceral elements into the story, including the depiction of Heathcliff's cruelty toward the poor Isabella, a macabre scene that involves digging up a grave and Ruth Barrett's percussive, jarringly modern score.
Yet while Hardy -- with his brooding, deep-set eyes and perpetual scowl -- is an extremely compelling presence (and also plays the sadistic Bill Sykes in "Twist"), Riley proves a less convincing object of that desire. Nor is the final act -- despite its theme of undying love -- the three-hankie affair that many will fondly remember, partly because the next generation proves relatively lackluster compared with the first.
For all that, it's still an extremely handsome production, following "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" in what thus far looks to be a laudable season for the PBS showcase, embracing the slogan that something needn't be black and white to feel like a classic. (Brian Lowry)

and Associated Press describes it like this:

The novel inspiring this new film was blasted by a certain critic as “one of the most repellant books we ever read.”
That got your attention? Well, get ready for the latest screen version of “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Bronte’s 1847 masterpiece that scandalized its contemporary audience and has haunted readers ever since. (...)
Set on the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the saga spans two generations. It tells of Heathcliff, the mysterious gypsy adopted as a boy by the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights (and we're only going to say this once: It's pronounced wuthering, not weathering). He rises out of his servile position to inflict his punishing will on the Earnshaws as well as the neighboring Linton family, into which his precious stepsister Catherine, his soul mate since childhood, marries.
Thanks to Heathcliff, "Wuthering Heights" demonstrates that love doesn't always make the world go 'round; sometimes, it wrecks it.
British heartthrob Tom Hardy plays Heathcliff. Comely newcomer Charlotte Riley is stepsister Catherine Earnshaw (aka Cathy), who as a girl accepts the lad into her home and heart, then later betrays him.
Also on board are Burn Gorman as Cathy's sadistic brother, Hindley; Andrew Lincoln as the Earnshaws' strait-laced neighbor, Edgar Linton, who is also Cathy's suitor; and Rosalind Halstead as Edgar's pliant younger sister, Isabella. (Frazier Moore)

The Calgary Herald does not seem to be very enthusiastic about the new production:

Well, it's no Lost in Austen, but this period piece with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, and Charlotte Riley as Cathy will just have to do, I guess. (Ruth Myles)

The News & Observer interviews Harry Alford whose

niche is the offbeat question – "What if the Bronte Sisters were a heavy metal band?" "What if Paris Hilton were President of the United States" – and the comedic stunt: He has written about traveling around New York City in his pajamas and his efforts to create and market a snack food called Nubbins. (J. Peder Zane)

The Seattle Observer talks about the theatre adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Jeffrey Hatcher:

But without sufficient ambiguity expressed as to the existence and power of the ghosts, Johnson's character becomes a classic case study in Victorian hysteria. That can also be interesting — pondering what happens to little girls who defy their stern daddies by reading Bronte along with the Bible. (Misha Berson)

Amy Jenkins in The Independent talks about what she has learnt from classical novels:

Following the findings from scientists that novels teach us to be better people, here are 10 classic novels and the dubious lessons I have learned from them:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I learned to desire the sulky brooding boy at school, the one who holds himself apart and looks down on you. I learned to dream that I might one day reform and win this Darcy type – even that this was in the natural order of things. This has caused me much grief. I'm afraid that the arrogant and unavailable man is not usually reformed. The arrogant and unavailable man doesn't ring you in the morning.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
See above. Ditto.

The film director Joel Schumacher recommends Wuthering Heights 1939 in The Daily Beast:

For the desperate romantics, just get Wuthering Heights and watch Laurence Olivier and you can swoon all over the room.

Shangols reviews Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión (in French), Spectatia talks about the Yorkshire dialect in Wuthering Heights (in Swedish), I Like Books is reading Jane Eyre, Tessa Just Read reviews Justine Picardie's Daphne and Children's Lit and Other Bits posts briefly about Jennifer Vandever's The Brontë Project. On Flickr, ellishall publishes a set of pictures of other Brontë sisters, meltonhill shares a set of pictures of North Lees Hall.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights