Channel 4 Confirms ‘A Woman Of Substance’ Remake On Splashy TV Drama Slate Featuring ‘The Rachel Incident’, ‘Undeclared War’ Season 2 & Daisy Haggard’s Latest

deadline.com:

Channel 4 has given the greenlight to a remake of what remains its most-watched drama of all time, A Woman Of Substance. The network has confirmed reports a new version of the show was in the works several weeks after the death of Barbara Taylor Bradford, who wrote the original novel.

The Buccaneers scribes Katherine Jakeways and Roanne Bardsley are penning A Woman of Substance, which follows the rags-to-riches tale of Emma Harte, an impoverished, ambitious maid in Yorkshire who takes a dizzying climb to become the world’s richest woman, gazing down on her sprawling empire from a luxury New York penthouse.

Banijay-backed The Forge is producing the new version and ex-Channel 4 drama boss Beth Willis is EP. Starring Jenny Seagrove, A Woman of Substance aired 40 years ago and remains Channel 4’s most-watched drama of all time with a whopping 14M viewers, figures that rarely get topped today.

Taylor Bradford died last November aged 91. The news was confirmed on a splashy Channel 4 drama slate from the network’s new TV drama and movie commissioning boss Ollie Madden, who is aiming to greenlight around one TV drama per month and has seen his drama budget double this year.