Handsome, Well-Cast ‘Jane Eyre’ on A

A new “Jane Eyre” is the latest small jewel in the crown of the A&E; network, which has supplanted PBS as U.S. television’s leading interpreter of popular classics.

A&E; is bearing the fruits of its collaborations with British production companies. Having already done Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” extremely proud and aired a pretty decent TV version of her “Emma,” the cable network now turns to Charlotte Bronte, whose “Jane Eyre” was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

It’s been produced numerous times for movies and TV. Capably directed by Robert Young and written by Kay Mellor, this latest rendering is especially handsome and well executed, with Samantha Morton perfectly cast as Bronte’s pastel but spiny orphan, whose job as a governess in Thornfield Hall, a palatial household reeking of old wealth and old mysteries, romantically ties her to her tormented employer, dashing Edward Rochester (Ciaran Hinds). Does he look great on his black horse or what?

Thornfield emerges daunting and foreboding through the mist of the countryside. Awaiting Jane there, her own wretched childhood now behind her, is a promising new life and her young charge, Rochester’s daughter, Adele. But ever so slowly, the major attraction for Jane becomes Rochester, their growing, titillating mutual affection warming and brightening the house’s dank, stony grimness.

Her rival, the golden, elegant, sophisticated, aristocratic, thoroughly sniffy, fortune-hunting Blanche Ingram (Abigail Cruttenden), is inevitably no match for earnest, intelligent Jane in her tight brown bun and institutional gray. Inner radiance triumphs over outer gloss, the unlikelihood of romance between plain, unspectacular Jane and magnetic, worldly Rochester being the very essence of Bronte’s novel.

Morton is subtle strength and luminance from within, and Hinds captures both the size and vulnerability of Rochester. Together they have the chemistry required for this relationship to succeed and be credible, as Rochester, at last flinging aside the trappings of convention and formality, confesses his love for Jane.

Yet just as their heart-thumping passion seems unstoppable, the great scandalous secret of Thornfield intervenes, dispatching Jane to new, unanticipated horizons and Rochester to the depths.

Only temporarily, of course. “Jane Eyre” is not known as a great love story for nothing.

* “Jane Eyre” airs Sunday at 5 and 9 p.m. and Tuesday at 6 and 10 p.m. on cable’s A&E.; The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).