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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Drama
    Drama TV Shows - 1980s 3 Mins Read

    Woman Of Substance, A

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    1 9 8 5 (UK)
    3 x 160 minute episodes

    Told in flashback and beginning in 1905, this Channel 4 drama (their most successful) was the rags-to-riches story of Emma Harte, a tough Yorkshire lass from the serving classes who made her way from kitchen maid up through society.

    Her ambitions took her out of the scullery and into the world of business. From humble beginnings, Emma starts her business with a small shop, but over the next twenty years she expands her stores and invests in the growing textile industry in Leeds – eventually becoming one of the world’s wealthiest women, owning a major chain of ‘Hartes’ department stores clearly modelled on Harrods (where some of the filming actually took place).

    By the time of World War II, Emma is the head of a major international retail and manufacturing empire.

    After an illegitimate daughter and two marriages, she finally meets the love of her life, Paul McGill, but their affair is cut short by a tragic accident, leaving Emma with his daughter.

    In the 1980s Emma faces one of her biggest tests – her children’s attempt to remove her as head of her company, but Emma is far from the senile old woman they think she is – she is determined to stop them at all costs.

    There was trooble on t’ moors, trooble in t’ big house, trooble in t’ shop and then trooble in t’ boardroom. Alas there was also trooble wi’ t’ script and trooble in t’ cast . . .

    Jenny Seagrove played Emma between the ages of 15 and 80 but succeeded in looking like a vacant 23-year-old throughout. Deborah Kerr took over at 80, but looked only 50 and had all the grit of a cuddly pink teddy bear.

    The period trappings were fairly generic and some of the scenes sometimes verged on the ludicrous due to over-compression. A good example of this could be found in three consecutive sequences in the second instalment in which Emma, now running her own shop in Leeds, turns down a marriage proposal from her business partner David, is sexually attacked by the evil Gerald Fairley, and then proposed to again, this time by her present landlord (played with gruff charm by John Duttine), all in quick succession.

    Adapted by Lee Langley from Barbara Taylor Bradford’s romantic novel, this mini-series was shown on three consecutive nights in 1985.

    A year later, a sequel – made in America and entitled Hold That Dream – once again saw Seagrove and Kerr in the role of Harte.

    Emma Harte
    Jenny Seagrove (1)
    Deborah Kerr (2)
    Major Paul McGill 

    Barry Bostwick
    Laura O’Neill 

    Diane Baker 
    Edwin Fairley 

    Peter Chelsom 
    Joe Lowther 

    John Duttine
    Adam Fairley 

    Peter Egan
    Frank Harte 

    Mick Ford 
    Arthur Ainsley 

    Christopher Gable
    Gerald Fairley 

    Christopher Guard 
    Winston Harte 

    Dominic Guard
    Jack Harte 

    Del Henney
    Olivia Wainwright 

    Gayle Hunnicutt
    Murgatroyd 
    Barry Morse
    Blackie O’Neill 

    Liam Neeson
    Adele Fairley 

    Nicola Pagett 
    Paula McGill Amory 

    Miranda Richardson
    David Kallinski 

    Joris Stuyck 
    Elizabeth Harte 

    Meg Wynn Owen
    Bruce McGill 

    George Baker

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