'A Woman of Substance' Casts 'Vera's Brenda Blethyn

The 1979 debut novel of British author Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance, was a massive hit. The first in what became the “Emma Harte Cycle,” a seven-novel saga tracing the fictional heroine’s rise from country housemaid to Wall Street mogul, sold 30 million copies and made Taylor Bradford a household name. Naturally, it was picked up for a TV miniseries adaptation, as this was the heyday of the format, with the original 1980 version of Shogun, the 1982 Brideshead Revisited, and the 1984 The Jewel in the Crown being massive TV successes at the time. Now Channel 4 is reviving the series, with Vera’s Brenda Blethyn in the lead role.

Blethyn steps into the role of the older Emma Harte, made famous by Scottish actor Deborah Kerr, who is renowned in Scotland as the first person ever from the country to be nominated for an Academy Award. She’ll be joined by up-and-coming actor Jessica Reynolds (Kneecap), who plays Harte during her teenage years. Along with the announcement, Blethyn released a statement, saying: “I’m overjoyed to be taking on this iconic role, in the footsteps of the great Deborah Kerr. As a fan of Barbara Taylor Bradford, it is an unmissable opportunity to play the fierce Emma Harte.”

Unlike the aforementioned series, A Woman of Substance never made it to U.S. national television despite being the hit that put the then-nascent Channel 4 on the map. Due to the network’s limited clout, it ultimately licensed the initial three-parter to a single independent station in the New York City area, just enough to qualify for Emmy consideration. (It won two, but ironically, it lost out on Best Drama to The Jewel in the Crown.) While most Anglophiles have probably seen it since, along with sequels Hold the Dream and To Be the Best, the lack of a built-in U.S. fandom means that, for now, this new version is only coming to Channel 4, with no American co-producer involved.