Brenda Blethyn's A Woman of Substance to Lovejoy – are we in the era of "microwave TV"?

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

If you’ve ever wondered how Vera Stanhope would look with a bouffant in place of a bucket hat, a big-budget wardrobe and even an iron, muse no more: Brenda Blethyn has burst onto our screens, via a Manhattan limousine and complete with sunglasses, padded shoulders and a designer bag, as "the richest woman in the world", Emma Harte.

Yes, it’s a new adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel A Woman of Substance, last seen as a 1985 Channel 4 mini-series, with Emma played by Deborah Kerr (old) and Jenny Seagrove (young). And it’s by no means the only "microwave TV coming our way in 2026.

Never mind real-life coppers looking young, you know you’re getting old when TV detectives come round again: (Inspector) Lynley aired on BBC One in January, while a reimagined Dalziel and Pascoe is due on ITV in the autumn – aside from police, even a new Lovejoy is in the works.

It’s a sign of programme-makers' continuing faith in our affection for familiar brands and, more subliminally, our need for nostalgia in a confusing world. For creatives, the challenge is how to juggle modern sensibilities with keeping older viewers happy while scooping up new ones.

A rebooted and rejacketed Bergerac began last year and returns for a second season next month. This new version, starring Damien Molony, offers a case study in mixing the old with the new. Thus, we get a modern variation on George Fenton’s glorious theme (straight from the school of Shoestring, with added accordion), while Jim’s burgundy Triumph Roadster is intact. But there are two gaping holes.

There is scant mention of "le Bureau des Étrangers" – it is a far more generic police unit where Jim plays maverick – and Charlie Hungerford is a woman. Zoë Wanamaker is on effortless form as Jim’s disapproving mother-in-law, but nobody will ever match Terence Alexander’s original, with his blazer, club tie and cigar, putting pressure on Jim not to go too hard on a mate because he might be an international fraudster, but he’s always stood his round at the golf club bar. I guess a character like that belongs to yesteryear, but I do remember him fondly.

An updated version of A Woman of Substance is even more ambitious. The original three-parter remains Channel 4’s most watched drama ever and, 40 years after it aired, many scenes remain etched on my brain.

Yorkshire kitchen maid Emma Harte, cast out and pregnant by her master Edwin Fairley, becomes a retail-empire titan bent on revenge. I laughed out loud when the exterior of Harrods appeared, its famous gold-on-green livery tweaked to read 'Harte’s'. Whenever I hear anyone say "tear it down", I hear Jenny Seagrove telling Liam Neeson – as loyal friend Blackie – how she plans to buy Fairley Hall only to dismantle it, "brick by brick by brick".

Like Bergerac, the new version has some alterations – Blackie is now Mac – and also anomalies. Global retail-market mogul may have been the height of aspiration when Taylor Bradford created her heroine, but Emma would surely be something far less fun these days, like a tech titan. The Dynasty vibe of 1970s Manhattan is out of kilter with today’s straitened times, and consequently far more jarring than the scenes set in 1910s Yorkshire.

But the series remains hypnotic for the same reasons it worked all those years ago. It is epic, sweeping, unironic TV, and it’s always thrilling to see the oppressed vanquish their tyrants to become free. I’m just hoping that 2026’s Emma gets to chat with a man about some bricks.

A Woman of Substance will premiere on Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 March at 9pm on Channel 4.

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