Juliet Barker on Jane Eyre 2006

One of the most well-known Bronte scholars gives us her opinion on the new BBC adaptation in this article, A Breath of Fresh Eyre (it must be an inviolable law that all articles on Jane Eyre must include puns).

HERE we go again, I thought, as I watched a red sari-clad girl wandering across a desert in the opening sequence of the new BBC 1 adaptation of Jane Eyre.
Some egotistical director has decided to drag the nineteenth century orphan heroine of Charlotte Brontë's novel kicking and screaming into the modern world and make her `relevant' to today's audience.
You don't need to do this, I lectured the screen. Why can't you just do a faithful adaptation that will let the characters and the story speak for themselves?
Brontë knew what she was doing and that is why her novel remains one of the bestsellers of all time.
As it turned out, I was wrong.

[...]

He may have accused Jane of bewitching his horse and causing it to throw him, but it was Stephens himself who gave the mesmerising performance.
Stephens, who has form as a Brontë hero, having played the more instantly likeable Gilbert Markham in the 1996 television version of The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, was surely born to play Rochester.

[...]

Ruth Wilson is a newcomer but her quietly confident performance as the adult Jane is the perfect counterbalance to Rochester's fireworks.