Brenda Blethyn headlines Channel 4’s A Woman of Substance as premiere date is confirmed
Channel 4 will launch its eight-part remake A Woman of Substance with the first two episodes on Wednesday 11 March and Thursday 12 March at 9pm, a schedule that also unlocks the full series as a boxset after the premiere. brenda blethyn stars as the older Emma Harte in the Yorkshire-set revenge drama, marking her first role since Vera ended.
Brenda Blethyn on Emma Harte
Blethyn plays an older Emma Harte who has risen to wealth and is shown in the promotional trailer in New York, where her character is portrayed as desperate to exact revenge. Jessica Reynolds appears as the younger Emma in the dual-timeline telling. Blethyn said she was "overjoyed to be taking on this iconic role, in the footsteps of the great Deborah Kerr, " while Reynolds called the scripts and the cast "truly inspiring" and said she was excited to bring the story to the screen.
Channel 4 premiere schedule and boxset plan
The broadcaster will air the first two episodes at 9pm on consecutive nights—11 March and 12 March—with the full eight-part series available to stream as a boxset following the transmission of the first episode. The second episode’s slot on the following night is confirmed, and the schedule for the remaining six episodes is yet to be confirmed.
Cast, creative team and source material
The adaptation is scripted by Katherine Jakeways, with co-writer Roanne Bardsley, and draws on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s 1979 novel. The cast features, alongside Blethyn and Jessica Reynolds, Emmett J Scanlan, Leanne Best, Ewan Horrocks, Harry Cadby, Niall Wright and Robert Wilfort. Additional performers include Toby Regbo, Hiftu Quasem, Sophie Bould, Georgina Sadler and Jo Joyner. Channel 4 bills the remake as following Emma Harte’s journey from an impoverished maid in 1911 Yorkshire to a woman who "becomes the world’s richest woman" and looks down from a luxury New York penthouse.
Context: a 40-year-old Channel 4 adaptation and earlier screen versions
This new version revisits a Channel 4 adaptation released 40 years earlier and is built from Bradford’s 1979 novel. The story was previously adapted for television in 1985, when Jenny Seagrove and Deborah Kerr split the role of Emma across timelines and the supporting cast included names such as Liam Neeson and Miranda Richardson.
Kate & Koji and Blethyn’s recent small-screen work
Alongside the new period drama, viewers can find another side of Blethyn’s television work in the contemporary comedy-drama Kate & Koji. Created by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin—who also worked on Outnumbered—the series debuted on ITV in 2020 and ran for two series, each comprising six episodes. In the first series, which aired in 2020, Kate & Koji averaged just under five million viewers. The second series was broadcast in 2022, with Brenda Blethyn returning as Kate while Jimmy Akingbola stepped away from the role of Koji to pursue work in the United States and was replaced by Okorie Chukwu. The plot follows Kate, an often prejudiced café owner in an Essex seaside town, and Koji, an African doctor seeking asylum who cannot legally work until his status is resolved; their arrangement—free food in return for unofficial medical consultations—drives much of the story. Both series are currently available to binge, with distribution including Prime Video and the second series on ITVX.
What makes this notable is that Blethyn’s casting in a major period remake coincides with a release strategy that gives viewers immediate access to the full eight-part story after the premiere: her first role since Vera ended pairs a high-profile lead with a broadcaster’s push for both appointment viewing and instant streaming access, while the dual-timeline cast—Blethyn and Reynolds—ties the modern revenge elements to the 1911 Yorkshire origins of Emma Harte.
The Channel 4 remake of A Woman of Substance will begin on Wednesday 11 March at 9pm, with the second episode at 9pm on Thursday 12 March and the remainder of the eight-part run to follow under a to-be-confirmed schedule.
