Begins promisingly in 1970s NYC and Brenda Blethyn in the middle of a power struggle with her kids over her company. Then quickly goes back to her young self, Jessica Reynolds (who's fabulous), and her experiences working as a maid in the dreadful Fairley household in Yorkshire, and how she makes good. I assumed the flashback structure was written for the series but actually its derived from the novel, written by Barbara Taylor Bradford.
Reynolds is Irish, and does a good Yorkshire accent. She was in Steven Knight's House of Guinness and Kneecap.
Leanne Best, Ewan Horrocks. Emmet J Scanlan, Lydia Leonard, Niall Wright (the dependable 'Mac'), Mara Huf (the granddaughter), Will Mellor, Rosie Cavaliero.
Tony Slater Ling is on camera on the first three. It totals eight x 45 on Channel 4.
The production designer is Anna Pritchard, art directors Richard Downes, Matthew Hope, Victoria Richards, set decorator Faye Brothers.
Unfortunately the ending is rather fluffed. For example we meet her three other children for the first time and have no information, for example who is the father of two of them? It would have been sensible to just write them out. Then the twist end is actually rather disappointing, after all she's had to overcome; the novel had a more positive conclusion. And where's Mac?
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