A Woman of Substance review – a lavishly absurd, cliche-packed tribute to simpler times

Basically, there was trouble at ’mill. Or at least t’mill owner’s house. This is the fons et origo of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance. The quintessential rags-to-riches tale, of impoverished Yorkshire lass Emma Harte making her way to the top of the fashion business, was published in 1979 – but it anticipated and appealed instantly to the self-improving, bootstrap-straining, money-hungry, power-mad, ambition-laden mood of the decade to come. It was first adapted for television in 1985 (starring Jenny Seagrove and Deborah Kerr as Emmas young and old) and now it is time for another. Katherine Jakeways and Roanne Bardsley have delivered an eight-part miniseries whose lavish absurdity takes us back to the supreme madness of 80s television and gives us the escapism we surely all currently crave.

We open in the late 70s with Emma Harte in a limousine and her multimillionaire grande dame prime. She is played by Brenda Blethyn, who has, at last, cast off her drab Vera garb and shuffling gait after 14 series. Instead, she has embraced a gorgeous silver-grey bouffant wig and equally lavish wardrobe, with, I hope, all the joy that such a metamorphosis can bring.

A young man leaps into the car to give us some exposition. Emma is the richest woman in the world! But! A mole has leaked Emma’s medical records, suggesting she is physically on the skids. Harte shares are plummeting! “The papers are saying you’re finished!” Emma marches into her steel and marble headquarters in what is absolutely New York and not Liverpool, and tells her minions that they need to “control the narrative” with press releases. I’m not sure that phrase was in use in 1970-anything but I’m not about to argue with that wig, so on we go.

The young expositor is Jim Fairley (Toby Regbo), a member of the Fairley family, with whom Emma has a longstanding feud. “What I’ve dedicated my life to,” she says, narrowing her eyes in a way that hasn’t been done properly since Dynasty, as Fairley pleads for a chance to befriend her, “is revenge.”

Oh God, I miss the past.

To find out what in the nurtured-vengeance is going on, we flashback to 1911 and a manor house seething with sexual tension and drunken wives in the middle of the Yorkshire moors. I am hopeful I will get to use the “Penistone Frag?” joke I have been working on since I saw Margot Robbie relieving her Heathcliff-based frustrations alone on a rocky promontory.

Jessica Reynolds as the young Emma Harte. Photograph: Sam Taylor/Channel 4/The Forge

At this stage Emma (Jessica Reynolds) is no but a serving wench at the house, which is owned – along with t’mill and most of t’people within a 10-mile radius – by the Fairleys. She has a dying mam (Sophie Bould) who uses her last breath to urge her daughter to “get out and get on”, in quite the most unashamedly cliched deathbed scene there has been since deathbed scenes first gathered their cliches. I was not moved in the slightest but I did revel in the sight of such perfectly terrible melodrama.

At the house there is Mr Adam Fairley (Emmet J Scanlan, most recently seen in How To Get to Heaven from Belfast), who is married to Adele (Leanne Best) – a dipsomaniac he keeps more or less locked away. He is thinking of having a thing with Adele’s sister Olivia (Lydia Leonard) and Olivia is thinking of it even more. There is Master Gerald (Harry Cadby), who is having his way with lady’s maid Polly (Georgina Sadler), who has red hair and is therefore no better than she should be. When their dalliance is discovered, Emma takes the opportunity to take over as Adele’s maid and proceeds to make herself invaluable through her ability to transform old dresses into new. I wonder if her skill at dressmaking and textiles generally, plus her embryonic business acumen, will come in handy later?

Then there is Mac O’Neill (Niall Wright) – a good man who is overlooked by young Emma because of Master Edwin (Ewan Horrocks, who is no relation to Jane). He professes himself in love with her and is adamant that their differing social standings do not matter, could never matter, not a jot, so she lets him take her virginity on the moors, and now I am working on a joke about Penis-stone Crag.

There’s more, much more, and that’s only the one episode that was available for review. A Woman of Substance is clearly Channel 4’s bid to rival Rivals, the hugely successful Disney+ adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s blockbuster. But it is fatally undermined in the attempt by the lack of humour available. Barbara Taylor Bradford’s tale is a glorious one but it is not a witty or lighthearted one. Only Cooper managed that, which is what makes Rivals sing. A Woman of Substance still works brilliantly as a nostalgia piece – a perfect homage to the age of excess and television that drowned you in plot and let someone else worry about the rest. Think of it as Dallas in Yorkshire. Three-star television but four-star nonsense and delight.

• A Woman of Substance is available on Channel 4.