Wuthering Heights: Not so much love but plenty of lust

Cathy was played by Northern lass Charlotte Riley as a minx who wanted the financial security of a marriage and the sexual thrill of a bit of rough with Heathcliff.

Heathcliff was played Tom Hardy as a headbanger (literally, in one scene, where he repeatedly bangs his head against the wall when things don't go his own way) with serious mental health issues.

This was not your Hollywood treatment of the classic story.

But did that make it any less watchable? Not really. If anything the treatment made it even more entertaining and realistic.

Apparently Bowker ignored the glossy Hollywood interpretations of Wuthering Heights and went back to the source material for his inspiration.

It turns out Bronte's novel was more violent and scary than we think it was and this was faithfully captured in the ITV series.

If he achieved nothing else it was reminding us that the untold layers of reinterpretations as a boddice ripper have done Wuthering Heights a great disservice.

Where Bowker differed from the novel was in making more use of the location - the Yorkshire Moors - than Bronte ever did.

Charlotte Riley, in fact, made a point of playing Cathy as a brassy Northern lass with an accent that at times was as broad as they come.

To say the adaptation was charming would be wrong. To say the lead characters were likeable would be also be wrong with neither Cathy nor Heathcliff being what you might call nice people.

But, stripped to its basics, it was a tale of raw passion truer to the spirit of Emily Bronte's novel than most modern attempts.