A Woman of Substance

Our heroine’s journey from Catherine Cookson territory to a shag-piled Manhattan skyscraper is treated with a surprising amount of sincerity.

[Brenda Blethyn] has the presence to make the older, decent but canny Emma convincing; Ms. [Jessica] Reynolds, who has to contend with the most fragrant passages of dialogue, transcends her various directors’ efforts toward emotional excess. .... Bradford wasn’t strictly a romance novelist, but she didn’t sell 90 million-plus books by being understated. The people behind “A Woman of Substance” know what fans of Bradford and Emma are looking for. The series is tailored accordingly.

A Woman of Substance may not hit the same heights as the best period dramas out there, but at its best, it offers some delicious intrigue that makes you eager to stick with it until the end.

The neurotic bed-hopping (which continues even after one of the trio is dead) was akin to torture. Thankfully, despite the longueurs, AWOS gets where it needs to go.

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.

This drama can be a bit “tell” not “show”. It is also, obviously, really silly. But it does have the nous to lean into the absurdity with thunderous string music, fortissimo piano and sweeping shots of the lovely Yorkshire landscape. If anything, the parallel timeline is even more lush.

Reynolds is a force to be reckoned with here – bringing humour, light, hope and heartbreak to every episode. With less screen time than Reynolds, it's hard for Blethyn to embody all of that to a similar degree but in the final moments of the series, she does come into her own a bit more as the story takes some soapy turns.