Screenwriter Peter Bowker restructured the novel's notoriously complex, non-chronological narrative by first reassembling the entire plot in chronological order before rewriting it for the screen, calling this process 'an exercise in literary vandalism' that proved to be a breakthrough in making the book adaptable.

Bowker deliberately cut the original narrator Lockwood from his adaptation and folded housekeeper Nelly Dean's partial narration directly into the main drama instead of using her as a framing narrator.

Rather than opening with Lockwood's arrival at the estate as in the novel, Bowker chose to start the story with the dying Edgar delivering his nephew Linton to the elderly Heathcliff, aiming to hook viewers with an immediate mystery about why the two men hate each other.

Bowker argued that the celebrated 1939 Hollywood film starring Laurence Olivier succeeded largely because it stripped out most of the novel's plot and focused solely on the Cathy/Heathcliff romance, which he felt did a disservice to the book's broader themes of hate, class, revenge and family.

The Yorkshire manor house Oakwell Hall was used as the filming location standing in for Wuthering Heights itself.

The two-part series first aired in the United States in January 2009 as part of PBS's Masterpiece Classic strand, months before its UK broadcast on ITV in two 90-minute parts on 30 and 31 August 2009.

The serial received a mixed critical response, with Metacritic rating the US broadcast 54/100, and UK critic Kathryn Flett of The Observer praising Tom Hardy's performance as Heathcliff while noting the second episode dipped in quality.