This version of the Emily Brontë story was originally broadcast on CBS in 1958. It was shown yesterday evening on TCM as part of their Richard Burton retrospective. In between commercials for Dupont, the audience was treated to a cast and crew that, in retrospect, is quite distinguished: not only Burton, but Rosemary Harris, Denholm Elliott, Patty Duke, Bernard Miles and Cathleen Nesbitt appeared; the screenplay was by James Costigan and direction by Daniel Petrie.
There are issues in looking at this copy. The print was wonky, due in part to the original recording method, and in part because it was designed for showing at the then-standard 480-line television standard, but shown this time in HDTV, resulting in showing the gimcrack set design in a fuzzy print. Well, I've seen worse.
I found the show interesting but not particularly good. The book is an early tearjerker, a precursor of the 'suffering in mink' style of soap opera. Of course, the genre was not as antique and ridiculous as it was when Miss Brontë had written it. The conclusion that the frustrated sexual urges of Heathcliff and Cathy are never consummated lead inevitably to misery and madness are the point of the novel, and the TV version makes this point strongly: too strongly, as Burton glowers and rants, chews the scenery, and spits out the splinters throughout in a style that would have deafened the audience in the back of the balcony in a large live theater, and must have reduced the speakers on a 1958 TV to inarticulate screeches.
This show was originally shown live, a genre of entertainment that has effectively vanished. Modern shows are recorded and edited and tweaked in post-production We are not accustomed to dealing with this sort of show, which requires a different aesthetic than modern TV. It is as absurd to compare this to a modern show as it would be to compare, say, a production of a Shakespeare play at the original Globe Theater to a modern production. Therefore, it needs to be considered sui generis. I did not think highly of it.