Layne Fargo's 6 favourite Wuthering Heights adaptations
The Favourites captures the can't-look-away intensity of Emily Bronte's classic novel. Author Layne Fargo has joined us to share her favourite adaptations of this beloved story, from novels and short stories to musicals and movies!
"Wuthering Heights is one of the most controversial classic novels, but also one of the most enduring. Whether you love or hate tempestuous central couple Catherine and Heathcliff, you can't help having strong feelings about them – and I, for one, adore them, so much so that I wrote a modern adaptation of their timeless story: The Favourites, which sets the passion and intensity of Wuthering Heights in the cutthroat world of Olympic figure skating. As I was researching, I checked out plenty of other adaptations of Emily Brontë’s novel for inspiration. Here are my personal favourites." Layne Fargo
What Souls Are Made Of by Tasha Suri
Though the original novel makes it quite clear that Heathcliff is a non-Caucasian character, most adaptations still cast lily-white actors to play him (I'm looking at you, Emerald Fennell…). So Suri's young adult (YA) take, part of a series of "remixed classics", was especially refreshing because it makes both Heathcliff and Catherine explicitly of South Asian descent.
Catherine helps Heathcliff uncover early memories of his Indian sailor father, and Heathcliff prompts Catherine to reckon with the Earnshaw family's dark colonial secrets, including her father's affair with an Indian woman – her real mother – during his military service abroad. This shared heritage deepens their intense soulmate connection and casts their complicated love story in a whole new light.
Wuthering Heights (1992)
This 1992 adaptation was my first introduction to Wuthering Heights, and the start of my problematic crush on Heathcliff, portrayed here by a perfectly tall, dark and broody young Ralph Fiennes. Juliette Binoche plays Catherine Earnshaw as well as her daughter Catherine Linton, donning a blonde wig to avoid any confusion.
Shot on location in Yorkshire, the film features gorgeous sweeping footage of the moors, emphasised by Ryuichi Sakamoto's haunting score, which in 2023 inspired a real-life Brontë x figure skating crossover – a gorgeous Wuthering Heights-themed ice dance program by Canadian champions Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.
Wuthering Heights (1970)
There's no question that matinee-idol-handsome white British movie star Timothy Dalton is horrifically miscast as Heathcliff, but I still can't help loving this campy 1970 adaptation. So many other versions of Wuthering Heights are dour and depressing, totally missing the sly wit and sheer over-the-top drama I’ve always loved about Brontë’s book.
Dalton plays Heathcliff less as a brooding wretch and more as a sexy schemer who knows exactly how hot he is and wants to make it everyone's problem. The scene where he and Catherine (Anna Calder-Marshall) have an argument in the stable that takes a turn for the steamy after he smears mud all over her face is a particular highlight of this criminally underrated movie.
Wise Children's Wuthering Heights
This original stage musical, adapted and directed by Emma Rice, originated at Bristol's Wise Children theatre company. I had the pleasure of seeing it during its USA tour stop at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
While the landscape has always been a character of sorts in Wuthering Heights, Rice makes the bold choice of personifying the moors with a chorus of performers, lead by an actor wearing a branched headpiece evoking windswept trees. The production was full of stirring, memorable images that made this familiar story seem fresh – my favourite being the moment when Heathcliff and Edgar Linton lie down on either side of Catherine's corpse. Just before the lights dim, Heathcliff turns her face toward his own. It was simultaneously romantic, macabre, and deeply petty, and isn't that Wuthering Heights in a nutshell?
I am Heathcliff curated by Kate Mosse
In this gorgeous collection, commissioned for Emily Brontë’s bicentenary back in 2018, sixteen authors use Wuthering Heights as a jumping off point for their own short fiction. The stories vary wildly in setting, era, tone and resemblance to the original, but they've all got a thrilling spark of Brontë’s masterpiece glimmering at their core.
Standouts include Louisa Young's harrowing chronicle of terrible romances, "Heathcliffs I Have Known", and Juno Dawson's "Kit", about a Londoner woman's ill-advised, all-consuming crush on a brooding photographer with knuckle tattoos reading Cruel Abyss.
Wuthering Heights (2003)
Is this a good movie? No. Is it a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights? Also no. But I get such a kick out of this bonkers MTV production, which turns Heathcliff (aka Heath, played by Mike Vogel) into a motorcycle-riding, wannabe-rock-star bad boy, and Catherine (aka Cate, Swimfan star Erika Christensen) into a California dreamgirl, who spends her days staring soulfully at the crashing surf while extremely early-2000s electric guitar riffs screech in the background.
The whole thing is quite The O.C.-coded (fun fact: this movie premiered just a little over a month after the pilot of that classic show), but it manages to capture the feverish intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff's ill-advised teen romance in a way most adaptations don't.
And I have to give mad props to Katherine Heigl, whose ultra-committed portrayal of Isabella (aka Isabel) Linton as a Malibu mean girl is a masterclass in understanding the assignment.
About The Favourites by Layne Fargo
Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn’t. My first love was figure skating.
She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating – and each other – to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and rollercoaster relationship.
Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.
As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorised documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the ‘real story’ through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary. But she can't stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy either. So, after a decade of silence, she's telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumours have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.
Alternating Kat’s own account of her dramatic rise and devastating fall with scandalous snippets from the tell-all film, and capturing the can’t-look-away intensity of Emily Bronte’s classic novel, The Favourites is an exhilarating dance between passion, ambition, and what it truly means to win.
