Rebecca
1979, BBC
Role: Maxim de Winter

Screen captures (at JeremyBrett LiveJournal)

Screen captured by Pauline:
Picture 1 // Picture 2 // Picture 3
Picture 4 // Picture 5 // Picture 6

Videos on YouTube:
Clip 1: The Proposal // Clip 2: The Confession

Video clips:
Clip 1: Preserving memories // Clip 2: Banishing memories
(Courtesy of RJDoll2)

New York Times review (PDF): "Mr. Brett is the matinee-idol type of actor who can make a thoroughly impossible character unexpectedly tolerable. He expertly maintains a layer of intriguing vulnerability just be low the surface of Max's arrogance."

From the book, Mystery! A Celebration by Ron Miller:

Rebecca is the story of an introverted and unsophisticated 19-year-old (Joanna David) who's employed as a traveling companion to an elderly American woman. While stopping in Monte Carlo, they meet wealthy English widower Max de Winter (Jeremy Brett), who's attracted to the honest, uncomplicated woman, whose name we never learn. After a whirlwind courtship, Max proposes marriage. She accepts and returns with him to the de Winter family home, Manderley, a brooding mansion on the Cornish coast. 

Almost immediately, the young bride realizes she'll be living in the long shadow of Rebecca de Winter, Max's first wife, a great beauty who died in a tragic boating accident the year before. The new Mrs. de Winter is constantly reminded of her own inadequacies by Mrs. Danvers [Jeremy's first wife, Anna Massey], the embittered housekeeper who was devoted to Rebecca. ... As the weeks go by, the new Mrs. de Winter begins to learn startling things about her husband's first wife and the nature of their marital relationship. then discovers a number of suspicious circumstances that suggest Rebecca's death may not have been an accident.

The Mystery! book further states: "Though no one seriously believes the Mystery! version of Rebecca is superior to the Hitchcock film, it was distinctive enough to trigger widespread praise, including a firm endorsement from Daphne du Maurier. ... The Mystery! version had one major asset the Hitchcock film lacked: length. Hitchcock had to tell the story in 130 minutes, which the BBC's director, Simon Langton, had nearly four hours."

Of Brett, the book says: 

The Mystery! version starred Jeremy Brett at the peak of his romantic leading man period. ... Brett saw Max as a self-centered man who was thinking only of himself when he married such a young, inexperienced bride. But Brett loved the "dark, sad, and angry" character and felt he became quite sympathetic as he finally began to cope with the past. 

Initially, Brett rebelled when told he'd have to grow a mustache for the part. He felt that would make viewers immediately think of Olivier, who wore a mustache in Rebecca. He finally relented. 

Furthermore, in a sidebar, the book writes of the Olivier-Brett relationship:

The first Max de Winter, Sir Laurence Olivier, had served as a mentor to Jeremy Brett in the theater, and Brett was the godfather to Olivier's daughter Julia. They had worked together in plays at the National Theatre, and Brett had been directed by Olivier on stage. When Olivier hear his friend had been cast in one of his most famous roles, he called Brett and kidded him, saying, "You might have waited until I was dead!" 

BFI ScreenOnline praised Jeremy's take on Maxim de Winter, saying that he "proved much better at puncturing the character's gruff exterior than Laurence Olivier had been in the Hitchcock version.

IMDb page