Rivals review: ‘Racy, glamorous, camp

The TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster is full of “terrible people” and “inappropriate jokes” – it’s also brilliant fun.

If you’re not yet familiar with the fictional worlds of British author Dame Jilly Cooper, then the opening sequence of Rivals – the new Disney+/ Hulu adaptation of one of her best-selling “bonkbusters” – gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Seconds into the first episode we’re confronted with a man’s bare buttocks furiously humping away in an airplane toilet, as his partner at the mile-high club grinds her red stilettoed heel into the bathroom wall. The ecstatic intro is interspersed with shots of popping champagne corks, seafood platters, enormous shoulder pads – and Concorde breaking the sound barrier. It’s racy, glamorous, camp – and very silly.

Originally published in 1988, Rivals is the second of Cooper’s hugely successful Rutshire Chronicles, a series of books that chronicle the lives (mainly, the sex lives) of English upper and upper-middle classes (these distinctions are incredibly important to Cooper’s characters) in an appropriately-named fictional area of The Cotswolds. Generations of young women, particularly in the UK, found escapism – and sometimes, sexual awakening – in Cooper’s books, which were passed around schools and sneaked off the shelves of older sisters. It should be noted, though, that Cooper has plenty of male fans too, including former prime minister Rishi Sunak.

So there was both excitement and trepidation when Disney+ announced an eight-part series based on Rivals, promising to bring a 2020s lens to the 1980s. Would catering to modern audiences mean toning down the smut (Gen Z want to see less of it on screen) and tightening up the loose morals? Thankfully, not.

The bare bottom that kicks off the show is just the start of the show’s dedication to what Cooper herself would describe as “rumpy-pumpy”. The show’s writer and executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins says Rivals offers equal opportunity nudity between the sexes. Twenty minutes in, there’s a naked tennis match. Before the first episode is over, there’s a montage featuring almost every major character busy at it.

At the centre of much of the action is Rupert Campbell-Black. An Olympic show jumper turned Minister for Sport and “the handsomest man in England”, he is the hero, or antihero, of the Rutshire Chronicles, an object of intense desire for both the characters in Cooper’s books and the women who read them. 

Here, he’s played by Alex Hassell (The Boys, His Dark Materials), who might not have the blonde hair and blue eyes of the book’s RCB, but certainly has his devilish charm and naughty glint. He’s a total cad – but the thing about Jilly Cooper stories is that there’s always someone even more awful waiting in the wings. In this case, it’s Lord Tony Baddingham –  played by David Tennant (previously Doctor Who) – the cold-hearted controller of regional TV network Corinium, whose hatred of Campbell-Black dates back to their school days (“He’s an irredeemable shit,” says Baddingham). 

Rivals also stars Poldark’s Aidan Turner as Declan O’Hara, a journalist-turned-chat-show host who Baddingham persuades to take a job at Corinium, and so moves with his family to Rutshire. A host of other recognisable faces make up the ensemble cast, including Bella Maclean, Emily Atack, Luke Pasqualino, Rufus Jones, Claire Rushbrook and Katherine Parkinson.

The characters are, largely, terrible people. When they’re not cheating on their spouses, they’re backstabbing friends, betraying colleagues, mocking neighbours or making spectacularly un-PC comments. But they do make for great entertainment. The parties are plentiful, the innuendoes frequent – many of them involving someone’s impressive equipment – and the jokes inappropriate, as are the relationships (there’s not a HR department big enough to deal with all the workplace bonking going on at Corinium). The show is taking a punt in asking a 2024 audience to be invested in the central will-they-won’t-they love story between Campbell-Black and Declan O’Hara’s innocent looking 20 year-old daughter Taggie, played by Bella Maclean, who has been slightly aged up from the book, in which she was 18.

One of the show’s most endearing characters is Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer), a self-made millionaire who the old money toffs love to make fun of – along with his wife, Valerie (Lisa McGrillis) – for not adhering to the social rules, or dress codes, of Rutshire. Jones strikes up a flirtation with romance novelist Lizzie Vereker (Parkinson), who on their first encounter encourages him to load up on potatoes from the buffet. These are meet-cutes, Jilly Cooper style.

Rivals was very much a book of its time – and the show takes us right back to that time, from the attitudes and behaviour to the fashion and music. There is copious blue eyeshadow, an abundance of handlebar moustaches, mountains of vol-au-vents and a soundtrack heavy on 1980s pop bangers. 

It does occasionally touch on more sober issues. There are brief mentions of the Aids crisis, as well as Thatcher’s Section 28, a law that banned schools from teaching children about homosexuality – but these sit slightly awkwardly amid the smutty jokes. And while, for the most part, women are enjoying sex as much as the men, there are occasions when it’s not fun, or consensual. Terrible people, especially rich and powerful ones, often get away with terrible things – one way in which Cooper’s world isn’t all that fantastical. 

The show is at its best, though, when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Even the main dramatic arc, a tussle over the future of a regional TV network, is faintly ridiculous. At one point a character gives a rallying speech on the power of television, calling it “the greatest art form man has ever created”. Rivals won’t change the world – but it might be the most fun you have watching a TV show this year. 

Rivals is released on 18 October on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK