Samantha Bond has said working on her new TV series Home Fires was a breath of fresh air because it offered so many great roles for women.

The Downton Abbey actress stars in the ITV period drama, based on Julie Summers’ book Jambusters: The Story Of The Women’s Institute In The Second World War, and said she had loved the experience.

She said: “It was absolutely thrilling to be among so many women.

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Ruth Gemmell, Francesca Annis and Samantha Bond in Home Fires (ITV)

“I’ve been banging on for the last five years about the invisibility of the middle-aged woman, and suddenly we went to a read-through and I’m going, ‘There are hundreds of us!’.”

“It does feel like it’s been a long time coming. To be honest, I think if we were to look through the Radio Times or the TV Times, we would still find a huge male domination. But touch wood, I’ll just be grateful, thank you very much.”

Samantha, 53, admitted that she had been nervous at first that the drama would end up being a bit more twee.

She revealed: “If I’m completely honest there was a bit of me that thought it was going to be a series about women making jam, and I thought, ‘Is this really where we’re going in 2015?’

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Samantha Bond in Home Fires (ITV)

“But the lovely thing about the scripts and the story is what the onset of war does to a community – the tearing apart of a community and the coming together of a community. And the strength that the women find in each other. It’s the emotional bit that got me.”

However, she added that there was a fair amount of jam-making involved: “We had all the proper 1939 equipment and you had to be very careful not to burn yourself, because jam gets very, very hot. But it was great. The day that was really fun was the day we collected the blackberries. We had this stunning weather.”

Home Fires begins on ITV tonight (May 3).