Wuthering Heights: a hot topic

As of late, the news today is all about Wuthering Heights. Several news outlets take a look at the figures. The Guardian examines the ratings day by day. First installment ratings:

In the battle of the female literary legends, ITV1's new adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights beat BBC1's terrestrial movie premiere about Jane Austen to win the Sunday ratings.
Peter Bowker's take on Wuthering Heights pulled in 4 million and a 19% share between 9pm and 10.30pm, while BBC1's Becoming Jane drew 3.3 million and a 15% share between 8pm and 9.55pm, according to unofficial overnight figures.
However, a repeat of crime series Lewis did better than both, bringing 4.3 million and a 20% share to ITV1 between 7pm and 9pm. (Leigh Holmwood)

Second installment ratings:

The final instalment of ITV1's new adaptation of Wuthering Heights lost out to BBC1's one-off family drama Framed in the ratings last night, Monday 31 August.
Peter Bowker's two-part adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel concluded with 4 million viewers and an 18% share between 9pm and 10.30pm, according to unofficial overnight figures, the same ratings as its launch on Sunday but down one share percentage point. (Leigh Holmwood)

The Telegraph and Argus focuses on Sarah Lancashire who plays Nelly Dean in this production.

As dizzy barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme, she lit up the Rovers Return, offering friendly advice and pearls of wisdom as she pulled pints of Newton and Ridleys without chipping a perfectly-manicured nail. But Raquel’s trademark mini skirts and stilettoes are a thing of the past for actress Sarah Lancashire. Her latest role sees her in a drab maidservant’s dress, her hair scraped back underneath a plain bonnet. Sarah is playing Nelly Dean, housekeeper to the Earnshaw family in a new TV adaptation of Wuthering Heights. She stars opposite Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, Charlotte Riley as Cathy, Andrew Lincoln as Edgar Linton and Kevin McNally as Mr Earnshaw in the much-anticipated two-part series, heading up this weekend’s bank holiday TV schedule. Nelly is the eyes and ears of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, where she goes to live after Cathy marries. The old housemaid watches over everyone and is a voice of guidance and counsel to the motherless children she raises, particularly Cathy.
Nelly plays an important narrative role, with much of the story unfolding through her recollections and letters as she takes us on a journey into the tragic past of the Heights.
Sarah was familiar with the story thanks to the most famous film adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
“I’d seen the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and knew the book so I was aware of the characters, in particular Heathcliff and Cathy as they’re at the forefront of this story,” she says, adding that she referred to the book during filming.
“Wuthering Heights is such an epic story, brilliantly engineered by (screenwriter) Peter Bowker and condensed for two 90-minute films. To ensure the full context of the story was correct, I needed to look at the narrative of the book.”
Other interpretations of Emily Bronte’s classic novel have tended to focus on the stormy relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff and the tragic love story that ensues, with not much happening after Cathy’s demise. But Bowker has brought the later phase of the book into focus; introducing the children of Cathy, Heathcliff and Cathy’s brother Hindley, and their interweaving relationships.
“I thought the drama was perfectly executed and beautifully written by Peter,” says Sarah. “I’d worked with the director, Coky Giedroyc, before on Oliver Twist. She is undoubtedly one of our finest directors and I really wanted another opportunity to work with her again.
“In some of the previous adaptations (of Wuthering Heights) they don’t follow the second generation but we do in Peter’s, and I really liked the fact he had included this within his scripts.”
Sarah, 44, describes Nelly as the go-between for Cathy and Heathcliff. “She feels terribly protective of them. What we don’t see in our adaptation, but is written in the book, is that Nelly grew up with Cathy. It was Nelly’s mother who was in service at Wuthering Heights, so the two of them almost have a sibling relationship separated by their status.
“Nelly also raised Heathcliff so she has maternal feelings towards them both. Nelly’s life is undoubtedly Cathy, because she herself has never married or had children of her own. She’s very much a woman in service bound to the family.”
Despite her role as carer, Sarah says Nelly is helpless when it comes to Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship.
“I don’t think Nelly has any influence or control over how they feel for each other,” she says. “Brutally bound by her status in life, Nelly is incapable of intervening to prevent their relationship. All she can do is stand back from it all.”
Wuthering Heights was filmed last year in areas of West Yorkshire, on vast areas of moorland and stone-built manor houses including East Riddlesden Hall, near Keighley, and Oakwell Hall at Birstall. Did the rugged Yorkshire landscape help Sarah identify with the story?
“The landscape is another character in its own right and there’s nothing else quite like it,” she says. “It can look incredibly beautiful, but then in a matter of hours be very bleak, which in a way reflects Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship.”
Oldham-born mother-of-three Sarah is that rarity in a former soap actress; like Sue Johnston and Anna Friel, she went on to build a successful acting career without falling back on celebrity ballroom dancing, bug-eating, ice-skating or yet another long-running role in a medical or cop drama.
The daughter of TV scriptwriter Geoffrey Lancashire, who wrote episodes of Coronation Street, Sarah played Raquel from 1991 to 1996 and became one of the soap’s best-loved characters. Since leaving Coronation Street, Sarah has shed the image of dippy Raquel to play a variety of roles, mainly strong, inspiring women.
She played actress and care home founder Coral Atkins in the drama Seeing Red and starred in acclaimed dramas Clocking Off and Rose And Maloney, and psychological thriller The Cry, and last year she starred in BBC1’s choir-based drama All The Small Things.
She even cropped up as a Doctor Who villain, an evil businesswoman in power suit and shoulder pads.
In the West End, she starred in Guys And Dolls, and her directorial debut in an episode of The Afternoon Play earned her a Best New Director Bafta.
Sarah has worked alongside some top British talent and is full of praise for the impressive cast of Wuthering Heights.
“It’s a tremendous cast, I feel very privileged to have worked with them all on such a wonderful adaptation,” she says. “In my opinion, Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley are sensational as Heathcliff and Cathy.” (Emma Clayton)

In the news includes Wuthering Heights in its last week's TV round-up.

It's not a bank holiday without a new gripping costume drama to entertain and ITV delivered on all levels with Wuthering Heights, which was both stunningly gothic and superbly cast.
Whilst this may be the last big-budget drama we see on ITV for a while, as programming budgets are cut, it was still impeccably crafted, adopting a simpler narrative to that of Emily Bronte's novel (which was apparently too baffling for Winston Churchill to follow).
The biggest issue with it though was it left the audience wanting more, as it did feel slightly squeezed. In many ways it would have been better to have let the text breathe more in a mini series, rather than two 75-minute instalments.
That aside, it made perfect viewing for the bank holiday and was a fine portrayal of a classic. This is the sort of TV we deserve, rather than the run-of-the-mill reality and panel shows we have to injure usually. Sadly though it seems we may have to wait a while for the next literary adaptation, unless of course you have access to ITV3. (Matt Robinson)

A reader of The Herald would possibly agree with that line about this being the 'sort of TV we deserve', as he brings up the topic of Scotland having been left without Wuthering Heights.

Having been substantially responsible, as head of drama, for putting STV on the map during the 1980s and 1990s, I am appalled at the stand-off that has developed between STV and ITV. Does the STV management think the viewing public will fall for the mantra of "putting Scottish programming at the heart of its schedule"? An American import, Fitz? A second-rate Irish drama series called Proof? A repeat of an indifferent drama, Sirens (in place of ITV's new Wuthering Heights)? Is this what viewers want?
Of course, this is about money, but also about a failure of ambition. Three consequences will arise. First, viewers in Scotland will be deprived of the most important ITV programmes. Secondly, Scotland will cease to have any profile on the ITV network, and therefore representation to a significant section of the UK audience. Thirdly, programme-makers in Scotland will have to start going south for work, thereby regressing to the bad old days before the 1980s. A sorry state of affairs. (Robert Love)

Another Wuthering Heights-related hot topic is, of course, that of the Twilight-inspired covers. The National Post simply takes a brief look at the matter, while Galleycat takes a rather more personal view:

First off, all due honors to Alex Balk for spotting the horrible new Twilight-inspired cover art for Wuthering Heights and writing about it at The Awl. We confess, the intense horror of nightmare came upon us when we gazed upon that wretched, wretched cover, but, as a friend pointed out yesterday, that was only half the story... because what the British division of HarperCollins got so horribly, horribly wrong, the American division actually managed to get right.
Here's the thing: If you're going to imitate one of the most distinctive book cover themes of the last five years, you should at least do it accurately. What's most wrong with the UK cover of Wuthering Heights is where it deviates from the Twilight model: ugly typeface, tiny ugly flower, and an ugly background that isn't sheer black. Now look at the American version: The typefaces are sleeker, and the flower is properly sized and photographed in the same vaguely unsettling way. The American version even has the same taglines—"Bella and Edward's Favorite Book" and "Love Never Dies"—as the British edition, but they look better here. (We still aren't thrilled with the "Bella and Edward's Favorite Book" badge, but it's not as awful, at least.)
Of course, this doesn't resolve the question of whether Wuthering Heights even needs what Balk calls "a fresh vampirey makeover." But we'll see what happens when American bookstores get the new edition later this season... (Ron Hogan)

Spoonfed reviews the performances of We Need to Talk Bonnets by Gráinne Maguire at The Camden Head (London):

There is a slight air of desperation in the small Camden Head theatre. Desperation of various Bennet sisters looking for a suitable husband, desperation of the Brontes trying to make a living by their pen while keeping their anonymity and the more immediate desperation of comedian Grainne Maguire who has realised that the ten-person audience won’t be growing and it’s time to start the show. (...)
We are ushered out of the Camden Head with a WWJED bracelet (that’s ‘what would Jane Eyre do,’ of course) and the advice that, despite the fact we can’t choose the plot of the story of our own life, we can decide what genre it’s in. (SpoonfedMeg)

EDIT:

Additional performances if this show have been arranged on the 22nd at the Camden head , in Angel from 20:00 with Grainne's show starting 20:30
There is an additional performance in The Camden head, Formerly the Liberties Bar, 100 Camden High Street on the 27th
20:00 20:30 start
Normally the price is £5/4 concessions but as this blog is for afficiando's of the Genre entry will be free to all Bennett's Darcy's and those who print out a copy of this page.

LoveRomancePassion interviews author Amanda Grange:

Keira: Do you read many in those genres and if you do what do you consider your favorite Gothic and paranormal romances to be?
Amanda: My favourite Gothic romance is probably Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It’s a very atmospheric book, with lots of subtle hints and mystery.

BoggartBlog doesn't like Wuthering Heights at all, TwinArtsPoetry has chosen No Coward Soul is Mine as Poem of the Week, Andy's Wild Blog posts about Jane Eyre, What Kate's Reading reviews Jennifer Vandever's The Brontë Project and Slice of Life does the same with Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë, Echostains Blog vindicates Branwell Brontë.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights