Channel 4 has launched a new eight-part adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's novel 'A Woman of Substance,' over 40 years after its original three-part series. The drama is set in Yorkshire in 1911 and 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. 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, said the show will be the perfect one-sitting binge. After a screening of the premiere episode, she said viewers will see more romance, more sex, more betrayal, which she thinks is fairly clear from the first episode. She added that Emma experiences 'huge loss' along the way, and that Jessica Reynolds, who plays young Emma, really does go the full gamut from huge joy and deliriously happy to grief and trauma.
I've suffered most of my life from imposter syndrome, but I haven't got that quite so much anymore.
Jakeways said the main thing she hopes people will find is that it's just really great fun and a tale of a woman, noting it's quite unusual in costume drama to see Emma at both ends of her life. Brenda Blethyn 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.
She said she's never had a plan and is devoid of ambition, always been fairly happy with her lot and just been lucky. Blethyn also spoke 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, saying they were very, very poor growing up, but mum and dad always used to say, you're as good as anybody else, and if you work hard, you can achieve it. She said she's suffered most of her life from imposter syndrome, but she hasn't got that quite so much anymore.
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, saying all the designers, makeup artists did a wonderful job, took a few years off, ironed out the skin. The series arrives this week, with the entire eight-part series available for binge-watching. The specific premiere date and how the new adaptation differs from the original in plot or style have not been disclosed.