A Woman of Substance is making its way onto our screens for the first time in 42 years – with the latest adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s bonkbuster debuting just two months shy of what would have been the author’s 93rd birthday.
While the British literary icon died in 2024, the drama’s co-writer, Katherine Jakeways, secured her blessing to take on the story shortly before her death.
“She did read the first episode and said lovely things,” Jakeways told The Independent. “She didn’t have any real notes about the first episode, which was amazing because I was so conscious as I wrote it that she had written it for years and lived it. It was her baby.
“She was so generous with allowing us to do what we felt was right for it.”
The 1979 novel made Bradford a bestselling author, with over 30 million reading the story of how Yorkshire maid Emma Harte overcame heartbreak and her working class background to become a wealthy mogul.
Outlander’s Jessica Reynolds stars as the young, penniless Emma in the early 1900s, an ambitious maid working for Fairley Hall who is used, impregnated and tossed aside by its aristocratic residents. Decades on, we follow the now-successful heroine ahead of her 80th birthday (played by Bafta winner Brenda Blethyn) as she uncovers her children’s plot to take over her retail empire.
Buccaneers creator, Jakeways, revealed that the author had one key request for the upcoming adaptation: to do justice to its setting in the Yorkshire Dales.
“The only thing that she did say was that she wanted to make sure that it was as Yorkshire-based as we could possibly make it, which we wanted to do in any case,” she said.
Based in Leeds, the production stayed loyal to the novels with filming locations across Yorkshire. “We had the beautiful moors, which we were so lucky to have,” Jakeways added.
“So I think we honoured her wishes in that respect. We've changed bits and pieces as we've gone along but really, I think we've stayed fairly faithful. I don't think fans are going to find anything to be too worried about in it.”
Born in Leeds in 1933, Bradford left school at 16 and became a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. She went on to become the fashion editor of Woman’s Own magazine and a London Evening News columnist before finding success as an author – writing 40 novels over the course of her career.
Having only met New York-based Bradford once over Zoom during the pandemic, Jakeways admitted that she wishes they had spent more time together.
“I feel sad about the fact that we would have met in person,” she said. “I feel so conscious of honouring her legacy and making sure it’s exactly what she wanted with all the best bits that she loved about it as well as the new stuff that feels more resonant to 2026.
“She was an absolute force of nature. She was a woman of substance herself. She started from very little and ended her life in a beautiful apartment in New York, hugely successful, having had great love in her life. She’s very much the powerhouse behind the story and the character.”
Neither Jakeways nor her co-writer, Boiling Point producer Roanne Bardsley, had read A Woman of Substance before being approached for the project – but both immediately saw its potential for a TV adaptation.
“I found the possibility of an adaptation really thrilling because it’s such a good story,” Jakeways said. “It’s unusual in that it’s a story about a woman who has loads of relationships and affairs and sex and marriages, but it’s not really a love story. If there is a love story, it’s Emma’s love story with her own ambition and work.”
Bardsley added: “I remember my friend at school reading it when we were 14 and she would hide it under her pillow because it’s a little bit raunchy.
“You just fall in love with the character of Emma because we all relate to her ambition and relentless drive – but also the ultimate fantasy of showing people who have wronged you just how wrong they were by becoming the richest woman in the world.”
The Channel 4 adaptation explores the first half of the novel through a “2026 lens” – which meant tweaking the character of Emma’s employer Adele Fairley (played by Leanne Best).
“We were always keen to make sure that we weren’t putting words in the mouths of characters,” Bardsley said. “An example of that is the character of Adele, who’s the lady of Fairley Hall. It’s quite clear that she struggles with alcoholism, mental health issues and agoraphobia and we definitely wanted to look at that with the eyes of people who are more aware of issues like that from 2026.
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“We wanted to get under the skin of what she’s going through but without making her aware or other characters aware of things they wouldn’t have known at the time.”
They also gave more screen time to Emma’s brother Frank after casting Am I Being Unreasonable’s Lenny Rush, who won a Bafta for his breakout role in the comedy in 2023.
“As soon as he came in, we were like, ‘it’s Bafta winner Lenny Rush!’ We had written the character of Frank not knowing who we were going to get but after we had him, immediately we started adding comedy to Frank,” Jakeways said of the 16-year-old.
“He is also really heartbreaking in it and he’s just an exceptional talent. It started out being a much lesser role but as soon as we knew we had him, we were shoving him in every episode we could and every time he was available – because he was also doing his GCSEs when we were filming.”
With plans for future series, Jakeways and Bardsley are hoping that A Woman of Substance marks the rise of female-led dramas with sex scenes written for a female audience. “I feel like that wasn’t the case only a few years ago and we would have been having a very different conversation then,” Jakeways said.
“We still need more but it is much more prevalent now than it ever has been so long may it last.”
Bardsley added: “It’s as if people didn’t realise that slightly more than half the population were women!”
A Woman of Substance airs on Wednesday 11 March at 9pm on Channel 4.
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