The latest 19th century classic to receive the luscious BBC costume drama treatment and currently to be seen on a telly near you on Sunday evenings, Anne Bronte's tale of pastoral passion may look like Jane Austen on the surface - all those heaving bosoms and tight trousers - but it is cut from a rather sterner cloth, with none of Austen's leavening humour and elegance of expression, while its epistolary frame is somewhat clumsily drawn and certain convolutions of the plot are eyebrow raising, to say the least. Still, its portrayal of the horrors of happy ever after turned sour, and of the suffering of an intelligent woman who realises she has made a disastrously unintelligent marriage, is strikingly modern and compels the reader forward - in search, naturally, of another bridal march and more happy ever after.
