I finished watching an adaption of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.” (My favorite novel) The only one had a seen previously to this one, was the 1939 version. (The 1939 version was very good I thought, though they never talk about Catherine daughter, Cathy, or Linton or Hareton which really take away from the story) This version was produced by PBS Masterpiece Theatre. It starred Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Catherine.
Here’s a little info:
In approaching the novel as a 180-minute adaptation writer Peter Bowker observed: “How do you go about adapting the greatest love story in literature? Well, firstly by acknowledging that it isn’t a love story. Or at least, it is many things as well as a love story. It’s a story about hate, class, revenge, sibling rivalry, loss, grief, family, violence, land and money…”
He noted that the book had previously proved “stubbornly unadaptable”, the most successful version being the Hollywood picture starring Laurence Olivier, which succeeded because “with classic Hollywood ruthlessness they filleted out the Cathy/Heathcliff story and ditched the rest of the plot. It’s a great film but it does the novel a disservice.”
Bowker hoped to “open up some of the other themes, not least the story of how damage is passed down through generations, how revenge poisons the innocent and the guilty, how the destructive nature of hate always threatens to overwhelm the redemptive power of love” but acknowledged that “structurally, the novel is notoriously difficult”
Faced with this “complex and sometimes frustrating structure” Bowker decided to reassemble the plot of the novel in chronological order and read it again. He credits the “exercise in literary vandalism” as “a breakthrough moment in pointing to the book’s adaptability”. In his version, Bowker “decided to drop [the original narrator] Lockwood altogether and absorb Nelly’s [partial narration] into the main drama”.
Bowker also shuffled with the original organisation of the flashback episodes, instead beginning his drama “at the moment when Linton is delivered by the dying Edgar to the old Heathcliff at the Heights”, rather than through the visitor Lockwood’s arrival at the estate. He suggested this reshuffle would increase audience interest; as the story begins “two men hate each other and we don’t know why. The Kind Man is giving his ailing nephew to the Monster and we don’t know why. Start with a mystery”. Bowker also found this introduction gave “the story of the younger generation the room it deserves”

This was a really incredible adaption of the novel. Tom Hardy did a wonderful portrayal of Heathcliff. I cried so hard when Catherine died. The saddest scene was when he sees Catherine’s body in the coffin, and he begs her to haunt him…
Heathcliff: [bending over Cathy’s coffin] You said I’d killed you… Haunt me then… Be with me always… Take any form, drive me mad but don’t leave me. In this abyss where I cannot find you… I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul…