Despite strong visual appeal and a star performance from Emma Mackey this rendering of the Brontë family saga gets almost everything wrong.

If one does not look to Emily to adhere too faithfully to historical truth or, indeed, to depict what actual writing is like, then it is a satisfying—or at least benign—story.

“Emily” is a good, engrossing watch, and it avoids most (but not all) of the genre’s pitfalls.

While Emily weaves in a couple of the author’s poems, it repeats the sins of many films about writers: it can only imagine the act of writing in the most literal and simplistic terms.