Wuthering Heights
ITV 1
The Real Housewives Of New Jersey
Channel 4
Of all the great miscasting decisions in the history of show business, surely allowing ageing popster Cliff Richard to play the role of Heathcliff in a stage version of Wuthering Heights takes the prize. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. Over the years, a stream of pouting matinee idols and simpering heroines with cut-glass accents have travestied Emily Bronte’s gothic novel. Instead of the violence, vengeance and full-on sadism of the original, we’ve been offered a watered-down “star-crossed lovers” romance – more Mills and Boon than millstone grit.
At long last, however, writer Peter Bowker and leading man Tom Hardy have done Emily proud. Bowker’s script took her labyrinthine plot by the scruff of the neck and shook out all the superfluous bits. Hardy played Heathcliff as the half-crazed macho tyrant he was always supposed to be, digging up graves and beating his enemies to a bloody pulp. I doubt you’ll see a more convincing Heathcliff this side of the great divide.
Wisely, Bowker and director Coky Giedroyc laid the groundwork for Heathcliff’s dysfunctional personality. A childhood beset by a viciously jealous stepbrother (Burn Gorman superb as Hindley) and racist neighbours, an adoptive father too fey to write a proper will (an inheritance would have solved all Heathcliff’s problems) set the young gypsy boy on the path to bitterness. When his childhood sweetheart/stepsister Cathy baulked at the poverty and ostracism which becoming his wife seemed to offer, his betrayal was complete. Cue revenge marriages, abandoned pregnant brides, abused children, early death and visitations from beyond the grave.
Best known for playing criminals and psychopaths, Tom Hardy grabbed the chance to explore this anti-hero’s more complex psychology. He exuded the sex appeal of (and also resembled) a young Elvis, justifying Bowker’s decision to give him a sex scene with Charlotte Riley’s Cathy. There were no naked romps like those which gave some critics an attack of the vapours during Bowker’s joyous, tongue-in-cheek drama Desperate Romantics. But there was enough to persuade you that their mutual passion meant business.
As Cathy, Charlotte Riley looked like she might be a bit bland. But as soon as she opened her mouth, she became a believable Yorkshire girl, as down-to-earth as she was wild and romantic. Bowker’s script was more sensitive than most to this character’s dilemma – marry the outcast and be hated herself or choose the secure and comfortable life of a Victorian housewife. Andrew Lincoln’s Edgar was less wet and more appealing than usual, making her choice less wayward than it often seems. Another hit, then, for Peter Bowker, a writer fast becoming the Andrew Davies de nos jours. It will be intriguing to see what he does next.
Over on Channel 4, documentary series The Real Housewives Of New Jersey demonstrated what happens when you give women no education, too much money and nothing to do. Their lives as empty and trivial as any Victorian lady, these trophy wives apparently spent their days under the sunbed tanning their hides to the consistency of leather, having their breasts replaced by bags of silicone and bitching about each other around the swimming pool.
While hubby was away doing something nameless but lucrative, one New Jersey housewife spied on the love life of her divorced chum and encouraged her own son in his ambition to open a chain of strip clubs. All of which might have been far more entertaining if so much of it hadn’t been obviously staged and scripted. If I want fiction, I’ll watch the real thing, thank you, ladies.
Helen Chappell
