Channel 4’s A Woman of Substance reboot promises to be a racy rags-to-riches tale, with the eight-part series arriving this week.
Set in Yorkshire in 1911, the drama follows Emma Harte from her youth as an impoverished maid through her rise to become the richest woman in the world, presiding over a fashion empire.
Channel 4 has returned to the subject of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel 40 years after their original 1980s three-parter. This new adaptation was announced three months after Taylor Bradford’s death, aged 91.
The show’s writer Katherine Jakeways, who created The Buccaneers for Apple TV, told Metro and other press that the show will be perfect to binge in one sitting.
As for what viewers can expect? Jakeways said after a screening of the premiere episode: ‘We’re going to see more romance, more sex, more betrayal, which I think is fairly clear from the first episode.’
But it isn’t just a romp – Emma experiences ‘huge loss’ along the way, with Jakeways describing how House of Guinness star Jessica Reynolds, who plays young Emma, ‘really does go the full gamut from huge joy and deliriously happy to grief and trauma’.
She continued: ‘The main thing I hope that people will find is, it’s just really great fun. It’s a tale of a woman.
‘It’s quite unusual in costume drama, you see here at both ends of her life,’ referring to Vera star Brenda Blethyn, who plays Emma in her wealthy later New York life.
At the show launch, Blethyn told press she didn’t quite have Emma’s level of drive, chalking up her own career success to luck and a likeable personality.
‘I’ve never had a plan. I’m devoid of ambition,’ the 80-year-old said to laughter from the audience. ‘I’ve always been fairly happy with my lot.
‘I’ve just been lucky. Many people can play the part. It’s not just being good. I think I’m quite nice to work with. Who wants to work with someone horrible? You don’t.
‘There could be equally talented people, but one might have halitosis, one be a kleptomaniac, they turn up late. I’m none of those things. I turn up clean. I know my lines, usually. So I’ve been lucky.’
Blethyn might not have been riven with ambition, but she did speak about how her mum and dad – who met as a maid and a chauffeur at a house much like Fairley Hall in the show – instilled her with real aspiration.
‘I’ve suffered most of my life from imposter syndrome, but I haven’t got that quite so much anymore,’ she said. ‘We were very, very poor growing up. Very, very poor. But mum and dad always used to say, you’re as good as anybody else, and if you work hard, you can achieve it.’
After 14 years playing DCI sleuth Vera Stanhope over on ITV, Blethyn admitted it was ‘quite nice to take the hat and mac off’, and get primped to become Emma.
‘All the designers, makeup artists did a wonderful job. Took a few years off. Ironed out the skin,’ she said, again to titters in the room.
If that was the upside, then the downside was she had to ‘behave’ more than on the giggly Northumberland crime drama set.
‘On Vera, I threw my weight about a bit,’ she recalled. ‘We could have a laugh now and again, but this is a new thing. I didn’t rule the roost on this. So I had to behave myself.’
A Woman of Substance airs on Channel 4 on Wednesday at 9pm.
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