"She's part of me! I can't breathe without her."
— Andrew
Sparkhouse is a 2002 modern-day adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, in which the two main roles of Cathy and Heathcliff are Gender Flip to Andrew and Carol respectively. Carol lives on a farm in Yorkshire with her younger sister, Lisa, and abusive father, Richard. She and her best friend Andrew are desperately in love with each other. Unfortunately, Andrew's snobby parents, Kate and Paul, don't approve of Carol and her 'bloody awful family', and through their interference a terrible secret is revealed which drives the young lovers apart.
Soon after parting ways with Andrew, Carol disappears, taking Lisa with her. Years pass, and Andrew marries a Nice Girl, Becky, and has a son of his own. But eventually Carol returns, and gains complete control of her father's farm while marrying John, a farmhand, for his money. But soon enough the obsessive love between Carol and Andrew is reignited, driving Andrew to the brink of madness and beyond.
Although an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Sparkhouse stands on its own merit as a hard-hitting, emotional drama in its own right.
This show provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Richard, Carol's father, who not only beats Carol up almost daily, but raped and impregnated her when she was twelve.
- Action Girl: Carol. From destroying Paul's car with an axe, punching Andrew out, standing up to her abusive father, breaking up a fight between John and Andrew with a shotgun, the girl can certainly look after herself.
- Adaptational Heroism: While Carol does some questionable things she’s still at her core a much more decent human than Heathcliff.
- The Alcoholic: Richard. Lisa claims that their mother was also 'always pissed'.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: played with when Richard dies. Lisa is found crying, but she says, 'I'm not crying for him, I'm crying for me. Of all the crap dads we could have had... things could have been so much better.'
- Anguished Declaration of Love
- Asshole Victim: Richard
- Awful Truth: When Carol tells Andrew that she was raped when she was twelve, he asks who did it. She says 'I don't want you to feel sorry for me', and you can see it dawn on him that it was her own father.
- Betty and Veronica: With Andrew as Archie, Becky is Betty, while Carol is Veronica.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: John, who remains quiet and stoic throughout, until his patience is pushed too far and he easily beats Andrew to a bloody pulp.
- Big Damn Kiss: The series opens with one between Carol and Andrew on the moors during a thunderstorm, setting the tone of their relationship.
- Bittersweet Ending: Andrew kills himself, but Carol is still alive, and it's implied she will go on to find some happiness with John and Lisa.
- Break the Haughty: Paul and Kate.
- Byronic Hero: Carol.
- Children Are Innocent: Carol doesn't want Lisa to know the full extent of their father's abuse, claiming 'she's too little, it's not fair.'
- Composite Character: John seems to be a mixture of Isabella and Hareton from Wuthering Heights. The role he plays, in that he marries Carol, is that of Isabella, but his character (stoic, gruff, and quiet but with a good heart) is similar to Hareton, as is the fact that Carol likes and respects him.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Andrew, who (in a reference to the source material) beats his head against a wall when he believes Carol is going to sleep with John.
- Dance of Romance: Andrew dreams of having one with Carol in Sparkhouse farm, to 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis' by Vaughan Williams.
- Deadpan Snarker: Andrew's father, Paul, has his moments.Paul: You may be wondering whether Kate's maliciousness is something she was born with, or whether it's been honed and perfected over time. I'm inclined to believe it's a combination of both.
- Destructive Romance: As in the original
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Andrew dies in Carol's arms.
- Distressed Dude: Andrew comes off the worst in a fight with John, and it is Carol who, with a shotgun, stops John from going any further.
- Dogged Nice Guy: John.
- Dream Sequence: Andrew has several dreams about Carol and starts sleepwalking. It's implied that he does this whenever he and Carol are separated.
- Driven to Suicide: Andrew.
- Expy: The series is based on Wuthering Heights, so...
- Heroic BSoD: Carol, when Lisa tells her she wishes she were dead, realizes that she's becoming just like her father.
- In the Blood: Lisa worries about this. She constantly remembers a boy at school telling her that she comes from a 'dirty family'.
- It's All About Me: Andrew. He only seems to care about how things affect him, even when he finds out Carol was pregnant at age twelve.
- Kick the Dog: This conversation Kate has with Carol.Carol: Why have you always hated me so much? Right from the start. I was ten years old and you just took one look at me and decided I was shit, didn't you?Kate: Well, you are. Now bugger off.
- Carol does this literally, when she hangs Kate's dog on Christmas Eve.
- Little Miss Snarker: Lisa, when she becomes a teenager.
- Love Hurts
- Love Triangle: Two. Carol/Andrew/Becky, and Andrew/Carol/John.
- Mama Bear: Carol towards Lisa.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Carol and Andrew.
- The Masochism Tango: Andrew's parents, Kate and Paul, actively despise one another.
- Odd Friendship: Lisa, a sarcastic, wise-beyond-her-years teenager, becomes friends with Becky, a sweet, sheltered young mum.
- Only Sane Man: John
- Oop North: Almost everyone has a Yorkshire accent, seeing as it's set in Hebden Bridge, near Leeds.
- Operation: Jealousy: Carol attempts this with John, and Andrew retaliates by taking home a female friend.Carol: What a sad, unimaginative twat.
- Parental Abandonment: Carol and Lisa's mother leaves them for a man she meets in the pub.
- Parental Incest: It's revealed that Carol was raped by her own father, and that Lisa is her child by him.
- Precision F-Strike: Only one F-bomb in the series:Andrew: Are you going to let him fuck you?
- Rape as Drama: Carol was raped as a child by her father. This provides the catalyst for the drama, as the discovery makes Andrew shrink away from marrying Carol.
- Sociopathic Hero: Both Carol and Andrew skirt around this, but Carol at least has reasons for being the way she is.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Unlike Heathcliff, Carol doesn’t die.
- The Stoic: John.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Carol and Becky, respectively.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Carol gives one to Andrew when he stands her up at the altar.Carol: You coward! You shitty little coward!
- Wild Child: Carol. Apparently, she was always like that, getting Andrew to steal cars and shoplift when they were teenagers.
- Woman Scorned. Carol doesn't take being jilted by Andrew lightly. In fact, she climbs on top of his family's car and smashes in the windows and headlights with an axe.
