From here:
BBC Radio 3 is to broadcast an adaptation of Wuthering Heights containing a number of strong expletives, with Cathy and Heathcliff both using the f-word, Radio Times can disclose.
Adapted from Emily Brontë’s novel by playwright and theatre director Jonathan Holloway, the new 90-minute production – which airs at 8pm on Sunday (27 March) – will portray the much-loved characters as listeners have never heard them before.
Although Holloway admits the addition of swearing to his production may raise some eyebrows, he argues that an element of shock is integral to Brontë’s story of love on the Yorkshire moors.
What, I wonder, could be less shocking than the f-word on the BBC?
The optimistic thought to remember is that these classics, the Bible etc., are big enough to survive the BBC treatment (just as Shakespeare outlived the “Bowdlerisation” of the 19th century). Someone will be doing Bronte adaptations etc. long after this ( … who was it?) is long forgotten. Recently, I saw a “de-Christianised” version of Wagner intensely Christian opera Parsifal. If, when, we return to a better society, these things will be dust.