Bodices are ripped like they’re going out of fashion in Channel 4’s new adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s bestselling bonkfest, A Woman of Substance (Channel 4, Wednesday). In the first several episodes alone, we see Yorkshire housemaid Emma Harte (Belfast actor Jessica Reynolds) canoodling in a “sex cave” with her posh beau Edwin, as a worryingly hirsute Emmett Scanlan (father to Edwin) dives into the part of a local lord of the manor who is in flagrante with his sister-in-law (Lydia Leonard), while his bed-bound wife (Leanne Best) stews upstairs. There hasn’t been so much exposed flesh since a heatwave at Bray seafront in May.
Earnest Emma is played in two separate timelines by the excellent Reynolds (introduced to audiences in the Kneecap movie, but here with a flawless Yorkshire accent) and by Brenda Blethyn in 1970s New York, by which point she has moved on from peasant squalor to become a self-made millionaire. These “present-day” scenes are where an otherwise assured production loses its footing slightly: Liverpool is an unconvincing stand-in for disco-era Manhattan, despite a presumably hefty CGI budget.
The heart of the show lies in the period sequences, which play out like a sort of Carry On... take on Emerald Fennell’s recent Wuthering Heights. Reynolds brings gumption and intelligence to the two-dimensional part of a can-do serving woman – back in the day, Taylor Bradford’s publicity team would have called her “feisty”. Emma is torn between her burgeoning romance with her useless lover and her impoverished family, living in a collapsing cottage, their tragic lives overshadowed by their mother’s illness.
A Woman of Substance was adapted as a TV series in 1984, where the part of Emma’s Irish best friend and protector was played by a young Liam Neeson. Back then, the character went by “Blackie”; today, he is “Mac” and is portrayed in broad fashion by Belfast actor Niall Wright.
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But the Irish cast member who truly steals the show is Scanlan. Even in more restrained productions, the sweary, hairy thesp has always had a big whiff of camp. Here he is unleashed and magnificently gonzo. With his plummy English intonations occasionally betraying his Dublin roots, he sounds like a mix of Hugh Bonneville from Downton Abbey and the lead singer from Fontaines DC. What’s even stranger is that his real accent becomes more pronounced during his more-or-less fully clothed lovemaking with his sister-in-law/mistress – bringing bonus accidental hilarity to what is already a first-rate romp.
