The Brontes at the BBC

It's one of the greatest love stories of our times.

Make my happiness.

I will make yours.

Passionate,

thrilling,

obsessive.

-Miss Cathy! Come back!

-Heathcliff!

-Come inside!

When the BBC discovered the Brontes,

it was a marriage made for the small screen.

Will you stay? As my wife?

An enduring love affair that has captivated

audiences all over the world...

And since that moment...

..I have never wanted to leave the place that you were.

..decade after decade, through good times and bad.

And even when things got rocky...

God confound you, Lockwood! Who showed you into this room?

..and the relationship looked set to end...

HEATHCLIFF SIGHS

..there's always been something new to love and to relate to.

How was it Dr Johnson described a second marriage?

"The triumph of hope over experience."

We are revisiting the BBC archive to explore an infatuation.

To see how this ill-fated literary dynasty has been

reinvented for and embraced by each new generation.

# Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba

# Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba... #

It's the mid-'50s, and Britain is in the midst of a marriage boom.

# I've never wanted wealth... #

After the difficult war years,

people were looking for some stability and security.

To banish all the hardship and austerity,

they wanted a bit of romance.

And the BBC were no different.

They were also in the market for a meaningful relationship

to perk up their television schedule.

So, in February 1956,

they tested the waters with a new adaptation of a classic love story.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was widely considered to be

one of the greatest romances of all time.

And in many ways, it was made for the post-war years.

The epic tale of a grand passion that survives against all the odds.

You must forgive me, that I'm not beautiful.

And I feel I'm unworthy of you.

You deserve someone so much grander and more lovely.

I'm just ordinary.

That's not true.

And I love you, Jane.

And to me, no-one in the whole world can look as beautiful...

This peak-time Friday night series starred Shakespearean actor

Daphne Slater as Jane and matinee idol Stanley Baker as a slightly creepy Rochester.

Filmed as live within the confines of a studio, it might look

a tad clunky today, but this counted as a lavish production at the time.

A new moon!

Come here, child.

Your name is Jane Eyre?

-Yes, sir.

-And are you a good girl, Jane?

-Yes.

A liar, too.

Do you know, Jane Eyre, where the wicked go after death?

-They go to hell, sir.

-And do you want to go to hell?

-No, sir.

Then what must you do to avoid it?

I must keep in good health and not die.

The '50s audience were drawn to the story of the plucky orphan

who survives a harsh childhood and then meets

the dark and brooding Mr Rochester,

when he appears to fall off his horse for apparently no reason.

They fall in love.

# You ask me why...#

Will you stay? As my wife?

I need you, Jane.

Love me.

# ..why I love him, whoa-whoa, dum-de-da-de dum-de-da-de... #

The production portrays Jane as perfect '50s housewife material.

Gentle, resilient and appeasing in the face of her husband-to-be's

frequent moody outbursts.

# He takes time to notice I'm around... #

The story, however, takes an unusual turn

from your average romance when on their wedding day,

Jane discovers that her beloved Mr Rochester is already married

and has been keeping his first wife, a lunatic,

locked in the attic all this time.

Well? Don't you wish to see my wife?

SCREAMING

Keep away, keep away! My God!

Jane leaves, and while she's away, a terrible fire engulfs Thornfield Hall...

SCREAMING

..conveniently killing the mad woman in the attic

but also leaving Rochester blind and maimed.

Jane hears his ghostly voice calling her and rushes back into his arms.

-WAILING:

-Jane!

I'm coming!

-Jane, where are you!

-What is the matter, why are you frightened? I'm here.

Oh, Jane, my darling. I thought you'd gone,

that my brain had played a trick on me,

that what I thought was you was only a vision, a dream.

Jane...

Let me hold you. Let me hold you close.

# Only you... #

This classic story of love conquering all the obstacles thrown

in its way was a potent one for a generation who'd experienced war.

# Only you... #

And when many men were still living with mental and physical scars from it.

# ..can make the darkness bright... #

Look at me.

Look at me well before you make up your mind.

Do you want a blind man you will have to lead about by the hand?

# My one and only... #

Let me... Let me take you by the hand.

Jane Eyre had resonated with the British public.

The BBC decided that the audience would want to find out

more about the genius behind the book,

so they dispatched a documentary team up to the wilds of Yorkshire.

-ARCHIVE:

-100 years ago, Charlotte Bronte died at Haworth,

a Yorkshire village on the edge of the Moors.

Whichever way you enter Haworth, you have to climb uphill.

It's a grey stone village with very little beauty about it,

and its people seem to keep themselves very much to themselves.

The main street is quiet, and even the shops show few signs of life.

But Charlotte and her brother and sisters are still remembered here.

From the moment the sisters' work was published

its autobiographical nature had fascinated readers.

The family moved to Thornton near Bradford to a grey little house

that hasn't changed very much,

and Charlotte was born here in 1816,

the year after Waterloo.

Branwell, Emily and Anne were born here too -

six children in the space of six years.

Film-makers were much taken with Charlotte, the eldest sibling,

who'd had to assume the role of matriarch to the large family

after her mother's and aunt's deaths.

But she wasn't the only sister who'd caught their eye.

As the '50s moved into the '60s,

there was something simmering under the surface.

A new spirit of possibility was in the air

and the romance boom looked set to continue.

The search for a soulmate dominated the pop charts.

And in 1962 the BBC chimed in with an adaptation

of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights...

..and its tale of star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff.

It starred Claire Bloom and Keith Michell.

Oh!

Oh, Heathcliff, I'm happy now.

This is where we belong, Cathy.

Leave Wuthering Heights to your brother, this is our inheritance.

Emily Bronte's book was one of the most complex masterpieces in English literature,

so reducing it to a running length of just 120 minutes was no mean task.

So the BBC turned to the man responsible for the recent success

of The Quatermass Experiment, writer Nigel Kneale.

He took his inspiration from the Hollywood film of 1939,

which depicted the novel as a straightforward

but intense love story set on the Yorkshire moors.

This moorland scene of the elementally attracted lovers became instantly iconic.

So much so that it would be forever associated

with the novel, even though Emily Bronte never described it.

Heathcliff, make the world stop right here.

Make everything stop and stand still and never move again.

Make the moors never change and you and I never change.

The moors and I will never change.

Director William Wyler's distinctive framing shots on a Californian ranch

were repeated almost shot-for-shot in the BBC version.

But this time they were cleverly recreated in a studio

in the slightly less glamorous Shepherd's Bush.

Just like the Hollywood film, the BBC adaptation

focuses on the passionate connection between Cathy and Heathcliff.

In my whole life I shall never know anyone or anything

the way I do you, Heathcliff.

Two people destined to be together,

but torn apart by differences of social position.

Well, if I married Heathcliff we'd be beggars.

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.

Michell's Heathcliff was a rebel WITH a cause.

When he wrongly believes that his love for Catherine

is not reciprocated he leaves Wuthering Heights.

Heathcliff!

Take me with you!

Heathcliff!

Heathcliff!

Heathcliff!

Some years later he returns, now a wealthy man,

but Catherine is married to someone else.

Oh, my darling.

I knew.

I must have known.

Oh, why did you go away?

Catherine?

Edgar.

Edgar, darling, see..?

He's come back!

So Ellen tells me.

However, theirs is a love so powerful...

We can't stay out here.

..that it will survive even beyond the grave.

Heathcliff, if I dare you now will you venture?

If you do, I'll keep...

..you.

Catherine, my own.

Catherine Earnshaw, may you never rest as long as I am living.

Be with me always.

Take any form, drive me mad.

Only do not leave me where

I cannot find you.

I cannot live without my life.

This was a romanticised adaptation

which avoided the original novel's Gothic elements

and came across as somewhat prim with its RP accents.

But as novelist Muriel Spark pointed out

when she braved the TV camera and the Yorkshire weather,

the ill-fated Emily's work was much more wild

and less buttoned-up than that.

I didn't fully realise until I came to Haworth Parsonage

that Emily Bronte, more than any other novelist of her time,

fed her genius on the chilly surroundings

of the house where she lived and died.

And as she hints at in a rather stumbling piece to camera,

the novel is full of sexual tension and desire.

I don't think that Emily herself ever had a love affair

or thought of marriage...

..none of the Bronte records suggest it

and there aren't any legends,

but she was a passionate woman.

All her passion and all the intensity of emotion that was

in her nature went into her writings and all her imaginative work.

In 1962 the nation hadn't been ready for the unrestrained

nature of Emily's work, but attitudes were changing.

Towards the end of the '60s things were starting to loosen up.

A sexual revolution was taking place.

Well, in some parts of London, anyway.

-You just go where it's going and flow with it.

-What does that mean?

We're just so free and so loving.

Beautiful, absolutely free-loving children.

Soon even the BBC was ready to let their hair down a little.

In October 1967, as the country still basked in the warm glow

of its first summer of love...

The corporation's latest offspring, BBC Two,

broadcast a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

They wanted to make this one daring, different and modern.

So, for the first time they upped sticks

and headed north to the landscape that had so inspired Emily.

Screenwriter Hugh Leonard promised his version would be less sentimental

and concentrate on the passion.

The era of free love had reached the Yorkshire moors.

Angela Scoular plays Cathy as a wild free spirit.

Catherine.

Heathcliff.

She and Ian McShane's antihero Heathcliff

connect on a mystical as well as a physical level.

-Cath... Oh!

-CATHERINE LAUGHS

Whatever our souls are made of, Heathcliff's and mine are the same.

And Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning

or frost from fire.

Then how can you bear to be separated from him,

to leave him deserted in the world?

Who is to separate us,

to say that I will desert him?

No, every Linton on the face of the earth might perish

before I forsake Heathcliff.

When I marry Edgar he'll be as much to me as he's been all his lifetime.

Nelly, I am Heathcliff.

He's always in my mind, not as a pleasure, but as my own being.

He IS me.

Cathy and Heathcliff are equals, who refuse to conform

to the rules of society.

This wasn't a matinee-idol style of love viewers were used to

from earlier adaptations.

It has a sense of realism and earthiness to it,

more in keeping with the original book.

And gone at last were the RP accents.

I want to go there...

where the light is.

That's Thrushcross Grange.

I want to see the Lintons.

See THEM?

Watch how they spend their evenings.

For viewers who had never read the book

but only seen other adaptations

there was a shock in store too.

Catherine Earnshaw dies around midway through,

not right at the end.

-She...

-She's dead.

I don't need you to tell me that.

A few minutes ago.

Did she mention me?

No-one.

A liar to the end.

Wuthering Heights is a love story,

but also a kind of revenge tale.

Heathcliff is fixated on destroying everything linked to his

tragic love affair with Cathy.

Run!

-No!

-Let go of her!

And your mother was a wicked slut to keep you

in ignorance of the sort of father you possessed.

This version ends with Catherine's ghost returning to Wuthering Heights.

Let me in.

Cathy?!

Heathcliff, unable to bear the separation any more,

kills himself so they can be together.

The idea that such dark, violent themes

could emanate from the mind of the young daughter of a curate

from Yorkshire blew the collective male minds of the BBC,

just as it had done generations of readers before.

It was Emily, the young virginal Emily,

who wrote about life and death and love,

not superficially, but with deep and real understanding.

At that time they were suffering from an industrial upheaval

that they couldn't control,

and diseases that couldn't be cured.

A place where one in ten of the children survived

and 30 was a ripe old age.

To get more of an insight into how bad Haworth had been

they enlisted the help of a local gravedigger.

Have you seen kids in graveyard, on t'stones?

There's many a thousand of them.

Dead like flies in them days.

TB or something.

Anybody who's been on a hillside might have run into it.

Anyway, they tell me it were that it were next unhealthiest spot to Whitechapel in London.

The view from their nursery window was a constant reminder.

Emily absorbed and accepted it,

like everything else around her.

These miserable conditions acted as an important motivation for the sisters.

As the daughters of a country parson, the Bronte sisters

were naturally confined within narrow limits.

All three longed to break out,

even the shy, retiring Anne.

They found an escape through their work.

Anne, in particular, used it to address the injustices

women of their era faced.

She was the youngest of the family,

and often overlooked.

In fact, the BBC had barely even mentioned her name before this documentary.

Her novel The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848,

and focused on the plight of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage.

It was highly controversial when it came out,

and then quickly disappeared.

Over 100 years later, and it would speak to a new generation.

# You don't own me

# Don't tie me down

# Cos I'll never stay... #

In the late '60s,

women were starting to fight for greater equality.

And it was in this climate that Anne Bronte's

long-forgotten work was rediscovered.

In 1968 it was adapted for BBC Two.

And for the first time the audience got to see a Bronte work in colour.

The subject matter was still shocking, even in the late '60s.

Anne's work addresses themes of violence, adultery and drunkenness.

Why should I pity you?

What is the matter with you?

Well, that passes everything.

I come home sick and weary, longing for comfort,

expecting to find attention and kindness, at least from my wife,

and she calmly asks me what is the matter with me?

There is nothing the matter with you which couldn't have been avoided.

You've been drinking all day and eaten nothing. How do you expect...?

If you say another damn word I'll ring the bell

and order six bottles of wine!

And by heaven I won't stir until I've drunk them dry.

It was a cautionary tale of the horrors of a bad marriage.

Oh, no. No, that's mine.

You shall not have...

Helen attempts to be the perfect Victorian wife...

-Oh, no.

-You thought you'd rob me of my son too...

..but her husband's behaviour quickly spirals out of control.

At a time when wives

and children were legally classed as a man's property, she's trapped.

Will you let me take our son and what remains of my fortune and go?

Go where?

Anywhere.

Where he might be free of your influence,

and I shall be safe from your presence, and you of mine.

No.

Will you let me take the child without the money?

No, nor yourself without the child.

Do you think I'm going to be made the talk of the county because of your pious whims?

I must stay here...

to be hated and despised.

But henceforth, we are husband and wife only in the name.

I am the mother of your child and your housekeeper,

nothing more.

In the end, Anne's heroine flees her husband with her son.

We've seen the last of him, please God.

Not only is she breaking the law,

but every social convention of her time.

Drive on, John.

It was a revolutionary book,

and Anne was finally getting some of the attention she deserved.

This production brought it to a new audience.

And the timing was perfect.

In the late '60s, marriage was under the spotlight.

The divorce laws were being re-examined with a view to

making it easier for people to escape unhappy unions.

Basically we just know it's a question of time before

we do eventually break up.

Cos, really, neither of us are very good at married life.

I would have thought that I do put my own point of view

pretty solidly on most things.

Let me put it like this - I'd love more children.

Eddie won't even consider the idea. And obviously...

Only because we are not basically happy enough to really

endanger another child into the same atmosphere.

While many British marriages were on the rocks,

there was one relationship that was about to flourish.

In the 1970s, media and public interest in the Brontes

would get a whole lot more obsessive and intrusive.

Opening positions, please. Very quiet.

It began in 1970 when the BBC adapted another lesser-known

Bronte novel - Villette, by Charlotte.

Sadly it hasn't survived in the archives.

The eldest sister's last book has been described as

the most autobiographical of all their work.

In it she elaborates on the true life story of

her unrequited love for a Belgian schoolmaster.

The BBC was so intrigued by Charlotte's private life

that they conscripted novelist Margaret Drabble to reveal more.

This is the trunk that she had in Brussels.

It's like the one that her heroine in Villette

loses on that long and lonely journey.

Charlotte writes, "And my portmanteau, with my few clothes

"and the remnants of my £15 enclosed in my pocket book,

"where was that?

"I had tied on a green ribbon, that I might know it at a glance."

And so off she went to Brussels to cope with the big Belgian girls

and to fall in love with her Monsieur Heger.

And then she was summoned home again by family troubles.

And back she came to eat her heart out in silence,

waiting for letters that never came.

The connection between the Brontes' personal life

and their work had always fascinated the public,

but the interest was about to reach fever pitch.

Here's Mr Feather coming with the post.

In 1973, ITV started to screen a biographical drama

about the trials and tribulations of this literary dynasty.

The series was filmed on location in Howarth

and used all the attributes of the period drama to document

the family's lives from childhood to their untimely deaths.

It turned out to be one of the most-watched series of the decade.

Look, they've written two pages discussing it in such

a considerate way, and they say that a work in three volumes would

meet with careful attention.

And you have one almost ready.

-So very nearly ready!

-You're trembling.

The very same week in September that The Brontes Of Haworth started

the BBC launched a brand-new adaptation of Charlotte's classic, Jane Eyre.

This one starred Sorcha Cusack and Michael Jayston.

You're cold.

Go, then.

I will, sir, when you release my hand.

Your hand.

Goodnight, sir.

Yes.

Goodnight.

The drama revelled in the more autobiographical

elements of her book...

..particularly Jane's terrible experience at the grim Lowood school.

I learned later that Miss Temple, on returning at dawn, had found me,

my face against Helen Burns' shoulder, my arms around her neck.

I was asleep,

but Helen was dead.

Jane grows up into a very different character from the one

viewers had identified with back in 1956.

Sorcha Cusack's Jane is a thoroughly modern women.

By the expedient of placing an advertisement in

the county newspaper I had secured a competency as a governess.

My pupil was to be one little girl of nine years,

and my salary - £30 per annum.

I considered myself independent, at last.

This screenplay sticks closely to Charlotte's original dialogue,

with a heroine who is looking for equality in her relationship with Mr Rochester.

Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?

Do you think I'm an automaton, a machine without feelings?

Or do you think because I'm poor, obscure, plain and little

I'm soulless and heartless?

You think wrong. I have as much soul as you and full as much heart.

Well, if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth I would

make it as hard for you to leave me as it is for me to leave you.

-Jane.

-No!

I'm not talking to you now through the medium of custom,

conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh,

it is my spirit that addresses your spirit,

just as if both had passed through the grave

and stood at God's feet, equal, as we are.

As we are.

The early '70s fuelled the conditions for an outbreak of Bronte-mania.

Not only were their stories pertinent,

but the family provided a welcome distraction from what was

shaping up to be a rather grim decade.

And not just when it came to fashion.

The country was in recession,

there was spiralling inflation

and industrial unrest.

All major brand areas are short.

Specifics at the moment - toilet rolls, paper goods,

very short indeed.

That is influenced by the three-day working week.

As the present became more depressing,

the past became more enticing...

with historical dramas offering escapist entertainment.

In turn, they spurred many to seek out the full Bronte experience.

Those quiet and isolated streets that had so captivated

documentary makers back in the '50s were being transformed.

Presenter Joan Bakewell made the journey north

to try to understand the pull.

I have come here as a Bronte enthusiast myself

to find out why so many feel as I do.

For Haworth is second only to Stratford in the number

of tourists it attracts.

People wanted to walk the same streets as the Brontes...

and traipse the same moors.

Fame of the little hill village has spread far and wide

and brought the tourists, trade and traffic.

What would those three reticent young women make of this?

Their lives had been private, their home remote,

and they liked it like that.

Today, souvenirs, knick-knacks, Bronte tweed, antiques,

useful bits and pieces, useless junk,

clutter the streets every summer weekend.

And among the bric-a-brac the occasional memento

of Haworth's past.

Weaving shuttles, reminiscent of the hand looms

which provided the living in so many of the cottages.

Well, I'm a tourist, I came from Greece.

Well, I have read the novels years ago and thought it was a good

opportunity to visit the museum now, as I'm in England for three weeks.

Yes, I've read nearly all the books and I've read the biographies.

I found it really fascinating.

Do you know a lot about them?

-Just that they're writers, that's all.

-Do you?

I know they're historic and that, you know? Enjoy yourselves.

We just had a look to see the clothes and what they wore

and things like that. I've been before, actually.

This is the third time.

All these houses they can see up the village, all the shops were houses.

-And now it's like Blackpool...

-Golden Mile.

-..Golden Mile.

Everybody who takes a house now,

they come from Bradford and Leeds and London

and all over, they've taken these houses over at ridiculous prices,

and converted them to shops where everything's sold from Hong Kong.

Television drama had fuelled the public's interest,

and now documentary makers were fascinated by the public's fascination.

Such is the compelling fascination of the Bronte sisters

that people travel from all over the world just to pay homage.

Last year, 114,000 visitors passed through the museum.

In fact, there are so many of them that the

building has had to be strengthened with steel girders.

Film crews jostled for space alongside tourists

in the parsonage where the sisters wrote their masterpieces.

What do you think it is about the Brontes which has somehow

managed to maintain this great hold on people, even today?

They're imaginary stories, down-to-earth stories,

with all the passion

and love stories that there always will be,

But there isn't the filth and the sex that's being thrown at us today

in the Bronte stories.

They're down-to-earth, imaginary, love,

passionate, good, clean stories.

In 1978, the Brontes became even more enshrined in popular culture.

..the exquisite Kate Bush, with her new single, Wuthering Heights.

# Bad dreams in the night

# They told me I was going to lose the fight

# Leave behind my wuthering wuthering

# Wuthering Heights

# Heathcliff

# It's me, Cathy come home

# I'm so cold

# Let me in-a-your window

# Heathcliff... #

The song stayed at number one for over four weeks.

Coincidentally, or not, later in the year the BBC decided

to screen another adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

It was the most accurate the BBC had ever attempted,

and stuck to Emily's text closely.

Cathy's "I am Heathcliff" scene goes on for around ten minutes.

I've now more business to marry Edgar Linton

than I have to be in heaven.

And if Hindley had not brought...

Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it.

But...

it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.

This version was Gothic and dark...

the prog rock equivalent of period drama.

Experimental and pretty demanding of the viewer.

Who are you?!

HE WHIMPERS

God confound you, Lockwood!

Who showed you into this room?

HE WHIMPERS

Your servant, Zillah, sir.

No doubt she wanted to prove the place was haunted, at my expense.

Well, it is, yes!

It's swarming with ghosts and goblins.

You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you.

Alas, some of its authenticity is a little undermined by the fact

that all the characters sport fashionable perms.

Hairstyles aside, this adaptation revels

in the more perverse side of Emily's book.

Villain! Villain, villain!

Villain!

Now...

I tried to...

Ken Hutchison isn't the pretty Heathcliff of earlier depictions.

He's ruthless and violent...

closer to the character described by Emily.

I don't allow anybody to inconvenience me.

Gone are the romantic scenes of the two lovers on the moors

that had become so ubiquitous.

Instead we see Heathcliff being creepy with Catherine's corpse.

It's her face yet.

Aye, but that'll spoil if air gets to it.

Since the day that you were buried...

..you've haunted me.

You made me think that you were not there,

you were on the earth.

This wasn't exactly the Brontes viewers were used to.

Thankfully, the following year, the BBC produced something that

was reassuringly familiar and far more family friendly.

The Brontes were given the honour of their own one-hour

Blue Peter special.

The Brontes had arrived to take possession of their kingdom.

Who were these studious children who came here that February day

and turned a quiet Yorkshire village into a major tourist centre?

The place is still pretty much as they found it, even though

a museum's been added and trees soften the bleak outline.

The house stands up awash with the rising tide of gravestones.

On the day they came here to the little village, which in those days

seemed so remote, the family was keeping an appointment with destiny.

In 35 years' time, all those six children would be dead.

But between them they would have written some of the most

famous novels and poems in the English language.

The Bronte cult was still going strong,

especially in the nation's educational institutions.

Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

were on every school curriculum in the country.

And the sisters' work was at the centre of the

rapidly expanding field of literary criticism in universities.

# When I'm with you baby

# I go out of my head

# I just can't get enough

# I just can't get enough... #

Perhaps wanting to capitalise on this, in 1983 the BBC

set about making something approaching a definitive version of Jane Eyre.

# We slip and slide as we fall in love

# And I just can't seem to get enough... #

It was aimed squarely at a family audience,

in the classic serial slot on Sunday evenings.

It began on the 9th October, and for the next 11 weeks - yes, 11 -

the nation was presented with an almost word-for-word

and scene-for-scene telling of the book.

It's been described as the most faithful adaptation ever attempted.

In spite of my blessings, I was restless at my tranquillity.

I could not help it.

The restlessness was in my nature.

"There must be millions like me," I thought, "who must have action."

Women especially, who wish for more than their narrow lot.

It certainly featured a far more convincing horse fall

than the 1956 version.

Damnation.

It even went as far as to include the scene where the handsome

Mr Rochester dresses up as a old gypsy woman to trick Jane

into divulging her feelings for him.

Chance has offered you a measure of happiness.

It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand and pick it up.

Other adaptations had wisely chosen to leave this out.

Well, Jane, do you know me now?

HE LAUGHS

It was well carried out, don't you think?

This was no party game, you have been trying to draw me out.

Oh, Jane, do you forgive me?

By the end of nearly three months,

the audience knew the book back to front.

Arguably too well.

Sadly, as with a lot of relationships,

this level of familiarity started to breed contempt.

Good evening. Well, let's not waste a second.

Anger and abuse is the order of the day.

AC Alnutt of Bournemouth refers to:

And Ms A Wyatt, writing from...

..says, in part:

# I want to break free... #

The audience's passion had started to cool.

The BBC decided it might be best to give it a rest.

# I want to break free from your lies

# You're so self-satisfied

# I don't need you... #

But what was intended to be a little break from the Brontes

turned into a long separation.

# God knows I want to break free... #

The economy was looking up, people wanted to look forward and not back.

It was the beginning of a new technological era,

and in the shiny black and chrome world of

the late '80s there was less and less appetite for costume drama.

Ratings plummeted, and by the early '90s the BBC head of drama

made the difficult decision to scrap the classic serial slot.

But in 1995, all that changed in an instant,

thanks to a scene that sent the nation's temperatures soaring.

When Colin Firth emerged from a lake with his shirt dripping,

in Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice,

women all over the country took a sharp intake of breath.

Not least Jennifer Ehle, who played Elizabeth Bennet.

# I just wanna make love to you

# Love to you... #

Mr Darcy.

Miss Bennett.

In that one moment the historical drama was reborn.

And it was much sexier than its predecessors...

..a deliberate attempt by screenwriter Andrew Davies

to bring a younger vibe to it.

There had been an old way of doing costume dramas,

and they were mostly done at tea-time, a semi-children's thing,

so you couldn't be bold or daring with them.

The literary adaptation's educational benefits were forgotten

in a flutter of Colin Firth's eyelashes.

Audiences wanted something more entertaining, more brooding

and better looking.

# Your love is my only desire

# Relight my fire... #

Period drama was suddenly hot again.

But elsewhere in the mid-'90s things had gone off the boil.

In 1996, the headlines were full of relationship breakdowns.

The Prince of Wales and Diana got divorced...

as did the Duke and Duchess of York.

And Take That announced they were splitting up.

Unfortunately, the rumours are true,

and from today...it's no more.

It wasn't all bad news, though.

BBC Two decided to reconnect with an old acquaintance.

It was over 25 years since they'd last adapted

Anne Bronte's The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall.

This production had all the hallmarks of this

new breed of costume drama -

superb cinematography, beautiful locations and outfits,

plus good-looking stars.

You are excessively impertinent.

Do you want me to go?

There's also the familiar storyline of the heroine

who falls for the charming but flawed hero.

Do you want me to tell you a secret, Helen?

Shall I tell you that, compared to you, Annabella Wilmot

is a flaunting peony,

compared to a wild, sweet rosebud?

Shall I tell you that I love you to distraction?

This one, though, does differ in one major respect.

Perhaps if you took a little less wine you might...?

By Jove, if you start on that again I shall order six bottles

and drink them before bed.

What a shame it is for a strong man like you to reduce yourself to such a state.

Rather than being nostalgic about the past,

like other period dramas, this Bafta-winning production

drew attention to the brutal side of Victorian marriage...

..with an unflinching depiction of domestic violence.

Arthur Huntingdon is cruel and abusive...

SHE CRIES OUT IN PAIN

..and despite his wife's best efforts turns out to be

a man beyond redemption.

"With my body I thee worship."

Remember, Helen?

You promised.

Helen refuses to be broken.

She leaves and finds the happy ending she deserves...

Summer, then.

Well, at the close of summer, then I'll be satisfied.

..this time with a man who loves her for all the qualities that

make her the strong, empowered woman she is.

You could say here was a bit of girl power in action.

Towards the end of the '90s, the tabloids seized on

this new cultural phenomenon.

-# Colours of the world

-Spice up your life

-# Every boy and every girl

-Spice up your life

-# People of the world

-Spice up your life... #

Young women were embracing a new, self-reliant attitude -

they were ambitious and assertive.

This was the era of the ladette,

as old ideas of femininity were being overturned.

This was something screenwriter Sally Wainwright explored in 2001

in her thrilling and thoroughly modern retelling of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

In Sparkhouse, the gender roles are reversed.

The Heathcliff character is a feisty young woman from

the wrong side of the tracks called Carol.

-Where is it?

-I've eaten it!

-You are so...

-Gorgeous!

-..annoying!

She's obsessively in love with her more affluent neighbour, Andrew.

What is it?

It's my reading list for first term.

-Have you read all these?

-Most of them, yeah.

I wish I was off to university.

You could have done. Easily.

You should have stayed at school.

Yeah, well...

-HE BLOWS A RASPBERRY

-Ah!

-Touched you last!

His family doesn't approve of the relationship,

and here Sally Wainwright takes Cathy Earnshaw's pivotal scene

from the novel and gives it to the male character.

Why can't you understand?

Why can't you be happy for me?

She's part of me, I can't breathe without her.

I'd die, I'd shrivel up, I'd...

I'd become like you.

I'm nothing without her.

Going to university, everything, it means nothing without her.

And if you knew, if you understood for a second how

I feel about her, you'd be ashamed of the way you carry on.

Andrew...

You don't even know what she's like.

-You think you do, but you don't.

-Don't I?

She is me.

You can't change that.

Nobody can.

Paul!

When Andrew's parents try to stop the affair,

just like her literary inspiration Heathcliff,

Carol is mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Get away from my car.

I'm going to call the police.

-Good!

-Don't.

-Why?

You know why. She could get me struck off.

You coward! You coward!

And in true Emily Bronte style,

it all ends in tragedy.

These modern reimaginings of the Brontes' work had reignited

the spark that had drawn the BBC to them in the first place.

The themes of love, sexuality and gender

were uncannily relevant in the 21st century.

So, in 2006, the corporation returned to its first love -

Jane Eyre.

Except, half a century on, she was more glamorous, more polished

and infinitely sexier.

I must leave Thornfield, Mr Rochester.

Jane is still the strong, independent woman

viewers had grown to love...

but this time when she arrives at Thornfield Hall

she encounters a very different Mr Rochester.

Dammit!

Christ.

He's still bad-tempered...

DOG BARKS

Quiet, Pilot.

Oh, dammit.

..but their first scenes make it instantly clear that here is

a man who's completely on board with the idea of equality.

He wants a 21st-century woman.

I beg your pardon, sir.

-I did not ask your permission to read the books.

-Permission?

To read the books?

You're a thinking, intelligent woman, aren't you?

Why ever would you need to ask permission?

Who else is to read them?

Adele? The venerable Fairfax?

I'd more likely find Pilot poring over the flora and fauna

of the South American flatlands.

Through flashback we learn more about his past.

And Bertha, his first wife, becomes more than simply the mad woman

he's had locked in the attic.

I was tricked by Mason and his father into pursuing his sister, Bertha...

..who was as beautiful as the glittering stars and just as tantalising.

We can see how deeply he's been hurt.

I was married before I knew her.

Before I had met the mother, who was, I found out later,

at that time and had been...

..for many years incarcerated in a mental asylum.

And that insanity ran through the family like a black river of disease.

It was but a few weeks before the full extent of her illness

was made clear to me.

No!

-Bertha, calm down.

-BERTHA SCREAMS

An illness which has grown

in violence and foulness at an ever increasing pace.

It was the most sympathetic portrayal of Mr Rochester to date.

Here was a hero worthy of a modern, emancipated woman.

Jane, I want a wife.

I want a wife.

Not a nursemaid to look after me.

I want a wife...

to share my bed every night.

All day, if we wish.

If I can't have that I'd rather die.

We're not the platonic sort, Jane.

Can you see me?

Then hear this, Edward.

Your life is not yours to give up.

It is mine.

All mine, and I forbid it.

THEY LAUGH

Theirs is a relationship made for the 21st-century -

equal, passionate and sizzling with sexual tension.

Over 50 years, the BBC's love affair with the Brontes has

experienced the ups and downs faced by any long-term relationship.

But it survived because it was built on extremely solid foundations.

Why did you betray your heart, Cathy?

The three Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne,

produced novels with themes so universal that generation after generation

has been able to connect with their work on a very personal level.

And over the decades the BBC has been able to bring it to new audiences -

making it relevant and keeping it fresh.

It's a relationship that is likely to continue for years to come.