Spot the landmarks as Liverpool doubles for New York in new C4 drama

Brenda Blethyn stars in Channel 4’s epic new drama A Woman of Substance which starts on TV tonight – but Liverpool takes a leading role too.

In the eight-part series, based on the best-selling novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, it once again appears as the perfect double for New York.

So as viewers watch the rise of Emma Harte from penniless Yorkshire maid in the early 1900s to a powerful 1970s business mogul, they can spot the city’s famous landmarks.

A Woman of Substance — Credit: Sam Taylor Channel 4

The lobby of the Port of Liverpool lobby was used for the interior of the department store that Emma Harte owns George’s Dockway was transformed into a New York City Street, and Water Street was used for the exterior for the dept store.

Over last five years Liverpool Film Office has supported more than 1,600 productions, bringing in £150m of investment and creating 5,408 full time equivalent jobs!

A Woman of Substance will be aired for the first time at 9pm tonight and is a much-publicised remake.

An original and Emmy-nominated adaptation starring Jenny Seagrove, Deborah Kerr, Barry Bostwick and Liam Neeson was Channel 4’s biggest ever drama when it was made in the ‘80s.

It tells the story of Emma who, betrayed by her aristocratic lover and cast out when she becomes pregnant, vows revenge on the family she once worked for.

With a masterplan to get to the top no matter what it takes, she gains power, outwits rivals, and shapes her own wealthy destiny.

But in the ‘70s, as she approaches her 80th birthday, betrayal from within Emma’s own family threatens everything she’s fought a lifetime to build.

Produced by The Forge, the new drama stars the award-winning former Vera actress, Brenda, as the older Emma Harte. Jessica Reynolds plays a young Emma in the series in which the city’s own Leanne Best is Adele Fairley, wife of Adam Fairley, who’s master of Fairley Hall where A Woman of Substance’s heroine first works.