Must Watch reviews: A Woman of Substance, The Madison and Scarpetta

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Ali Plumb join Naga Munchetty to review ‘A Woman of Substance’, ‘The Madison’, and ‘Scarpetta’.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of them?

A Woman of Substance is an eight-part Channel 4 drama. Based on the novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, it spans six decades, and charts the rise of Emma Harte from being a maid in Yorkshire to becoming a powerful businesswoman in the '70s. But even though she now has all the money in the world, she still wants revenge on the family she once worked for.

Ali thinks A Woman of Substance is a Must Watch but Hayley disagrees.

Ali says, “I could not stop watching it. I just really enjoyed the show.”

He describes the series as “preposterous” because it is “obviously super ‘80s, super well lit, and everyone looks gorgeous. It's all perfectly tailored, naturally. And yet I enjoyed the show because of its silliness, and because it’s pure wish fulfillment.”

“You’re watching somebody in the 1910s working as a servant, and how she ends up being this magnate as we jump forward into the 70s, and we discover how she got so successful.”

But he adds that if you’ve watched the original TV adaptation from 1985, “this is all old news to you”.

He says, “the actress playing Emma, Jessica Reynolds, is just so charming and so enjoyable”.

But Hayley disagrees, “this isn't a Must Watch for me at all. I suspect that this came about in the wake of the success of Rivals and maybe even Wuthering Heights, because you've got this classic novel with sex in it, and then you've got some 1970s bits as well.”

Hayleys says that whilst Rivals shocked people who were snobby about Jilly Cooper novels, A Woman of Substance “did not have the same effect”.

“Even though there were campy bits and it was preposterous, it also seems like a kind of earnest, incredibly drawn‑out retelling of a novel I will never read because I assume I won't like it.”

She finds the show to be “clichéd and quite cringeworthy”, and also the kind of thing “you'd find on TV when you were at home sick from school in the ‘90s”.

You can watch all episodes of A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 now.

The Madison is the latest from Yellowstone writer-producer Taylor Sheridan. This show has a similar feel, tackling life in the West, good ol' fashioned family drama and the fight against modernity, or in this case, the evils of city-living. It centres around Michelle Pfeiffer's Stacy and her spoiled family coming to terms with their patriarch's death (Kurt Russell) and their sudden move from NYC to rural Montana.

Both Ali and Hayley agree that The Madison is not a Must Watch.

Hayley says, “when I first saw that Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell were doing a show together, I was already on board before it arrived because I love them both”.

“I was then less keen when I saw it was by Taylor Sheridan because he makes shows exclusively for dads over the age of 60 who feel weighed down by having to deal with wives and daughters.”

She finds a lot of the dialogue to be writer Taylor Sheridan “debating subjects and using his characters as puppets, such as how bad New York is, which seems to be the subject of his ire.”

“He seems to be constantly whining about the younger generation being stupid. It’s just annoying on many, many levels.”

She believes the show is “unreasonably boring” with “a lot of shots of beautiful scenery and sunsets with lots of soaring strings on the soundtrack.”

“It's so dull, even though Michelle Pfeiffer is in it looking beautiful.”

Ali agrees and says he “cannot deny how dull this is”.

“I want to shout out some of the stuff that Taylor Sheridan has done which is undeniably brilliant: Sicario, Hell or High Water, Wind River.”

But he says that lately, “it does feel like most things are just ‘countryside good, city bad’. And this is the primo example of him stating that over and over and over.”

“Kurt Russell is better than this, Michelle Pfeiffer is obviously better than this. And I hate to say that about Michelle Pfeiffer, but it does feel that way.”

He says he is "disappointed" because he has “a soft spot for Taylor Sheridan”.

“And I have definitely enjoyed watching episodes of Yellowstone with my dad in particular. But this wasn't the one.”

Part One of The Madison is available to stream now on Paramount+.

Scarpetta is a new series on Amazon Prime, starring Nicole Kidman, and based on the Patricia Cornwall novels. At various points Demi Moore, Angelina Jolie, Jodie Foster, and Helen Mirren were all said to be attached to it, but in the end it was Nicole Kidman who landed the role of forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, who needs to prove that her career-making case from 28 years prior isn't also her undoing.

Hayley and Ali do not think Scarpetta is a Must Watch.

Ali asks, “do people think that Nicole Kidman is a good fit for Kay? This is someone who in the novels I believe is a diminutive, Italian-American lady, and I don't think Nicole Kidman quite captures the character from the books.”

He does think Jamie Lee Curtis is “loud and big here, and I love her”.

“But I don't really get all the pieces on the board. I never felt it come together and I never really got hooked on the core mystery. I never found myself wanting to know more.”

He says, “you can have all the best talent in the world, but the storyline and the delivery for me wasn't there and the tone certainly was not there”.

“I know lots of people who adore this character so maybe they might want to give it a shot, hoping the second series will do better.”

Hayley is disappointed that she didn’t enjoy Scarpetta because she loves a forensic pathologist.

“The character first appeared in a novel in 1990, but it's this weird 90s-ness of the show that really makes it fail for me, even though they’ve updated it: it's set in the current day and there's this character who's in love with an AI chatbot.”

She thinks Jamie Lee Curtis’ character could have been the “comedy relief character in the middle of all the darkness” but wasn’t.

“There’s also a vague attempt to suggest, especially in the early timeline, that Scarpetta came up in this quite misogynistic department, but it's kind of tacked on like decoration. I think Prime Suspect did a much better job of that and that was in 1991."

She describes the show as “a big missed opportunity. It could have been deep and it could have been about something, but it just feels quite shallow.”

“It feels like something you’d watch because it's on rather than something you chose.”

All eight episodes of Scarpetta are available now on Amazon Prime.

Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature. This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist. More on how the BBC uses AI.