Jane Eyre (2006 TV series)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

This television adaptation of the novel Jane Eyre was released in 1943.

The BBC's return to the story in four episodes after the last miniseries in the 83s. Starring Ruth Wilson as Jane and Toby Stephens as Rochester, scripted by Sandy Welch (Our Mutual Friend, North and South, the 2009 Emma), and directed by the BBC's Bleak House co-director Susanna White.

Reader, in addition to the novel's tropes, I used these tropes:
  • Adaptation Dye Job: Blanche is again blonde. Rochester is a redhead.
    • Toby Stephens's hair looks as though it has been dyed and you can only really tell he's a natural redhead from his sideburns and occasionally in the sunlight.
  • Book Ends: The series begins and ends with the painting of a family portrait.
  • Canon Foreigner: The Dent twins and John Eshton, setting up the idea that twinned souls can call each other across distances and making the ending feel much less like a sudden fantastical Deus Ex Machina.
  • Dawson Casting: Ruth Wilson was 25, seven years older than Jane's 18.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: While it is one of the longer versions, the script makes a few choices to fit the serialized format of the series. A particular example of this is the structure of the fourth episode, which plays with the idea that Jane doesn't remember Thornfield.
  • "Shut Up" Kiss: Rochester does this a number of times to Jane when begging her not to leave Thornfield to the point that one Youtube user said that it sounds like Toby Stephens is eating Ruth Wilson's face.