Standout star of Wuthering Heights?

TV's favourite grump, Martin Clunes

- Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent

It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with bodices ripped to shreds and a flirtation with BDSM.

And yet the standout star of Emerald Fennell's new film isn't one of its smouldering young lovers, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, but British television's most affable grump - Martin Clunes.

Clunes plays Mr Earnshaw, the patriarch whose decision to bring home a destitute, young Heathcliff from Liverpool to the Yorkshire moors sets in motion the destructive love story at the centre of the story. In Fennell's reworking of Emily Brontë's novel, Cathy's elder brother, Hindley, is abolished entirely, with all his cruelty, boozing and gambling folded into the father instead.

"He's rotten to the core," Clunes told ITV's This Morning recently. "He's sort of drinking from the start. He's a devout misogynist. He's got a gambling addiction and is covered in vomit."