'I'm A Millennial And The Best Thing About "Rivals" Is Its Portrayal Of Dating – Here's Why'
Have you finished watching Rivals, the eight-episode adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper's 1988 novel of the same name, yet? If you haven't, the chances are that the person next to you on the Tube has, or the person sitting opposite you in the office. It's all anybody can talk about — and rightly so. But it's not just the naked tennis or the rabid bonking — and bonking really is the only word for it — that's got my WhatsApp notifications trembling with excitement and my friends frothing at the mouth to discuss it with me. It's how glorious the escapism of the show is in its depiction of matters of the heart.
Rivals is set in the fictional county of Rutshire in the Cotswolds in 1986, a year when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in power, an era when the hair, eyeshadow and shoulder pads were bigger, bolder and more brash than ever. It tells the story of the rivalry between the devilishly handsome and sexually vivacious Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), a monied MP and former-Olympian, and his neighbour Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), the controller of commercial television station, Corinium. Woven into the rich tapestry of the series are the hallmarks of Cooper's experience of the Cotswolds during the 1980s; horses, dogs, booze and bonking. Rivals perfectly encapsulates the spirit of hope, hedonism and — albeit potentially misplaced — optimism of the 1980s.
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In fact, while the sex scenes in Rivals might not leave you personally hot under the collar — some of them are almost satirically goofy — to binge a show that centres love, lust and romance in the halcyon days before dating apps, ghosting, social media and general dating dysphoria is like taking a deep breath of fresh air. Rivals is set in a world pre-digital dating before the hysteria of read notifications and cat-fishing were a thing. The characters in the show might be loose with their morals, lips and hips but, with the exception of a few storylines that are less positive hallmarks of the era, they're not afraid to pursue what their heart desires.
Young people today have fallen out of love with dating apps; recent data released earlier this year found that more than half of all single adults are ditching dating apps in favour of pursuing a more 'old-fashioned' approach to finding love, an 'approach' which Rivals is filled with. Take Patrick O'Hara (Gabriel Tierney) who, in episode three, celebrates his 21st birthday party with a totally over-the-top birthday party for 200 guests. Among the mingling and moving bodies of his parent's house, Paddy finds Cameron Cooke (Nafessa Williams) and the pair stay up until the sun rises, drinking champagne and chatting. The series' protagonist, Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) meets Agatha 'Taggie' O'Hara (Bella Maclean) in the first episode of the series, which precedes a long and, at times, painful love story. Meet-cutes died a death when Silicon Valley tech companies created an algorithm that dictated our potential suitors, a bounty of which we can now find with a few lacklustre swipes of our fingers, no charm of in-person flirting required. It's not just the dating either, it's the drinking and the general unselfconscious naughtiness of the 1980s that the show depicts wonderfully too. It's the fact that, for all of their foibles, the cast of Rivals are living their lives — albeit messily, of course.
'I mean, it must've been mega stressful because there was a limited pool of people to choose from,' says author, journalist and Dame Jilly Cooper super-fan, Kat Brown, who also guest stars on the official Rivals podcast. 'But also how calming for the same reasons; to meet people in real-life and be able to see immediately if you vibed — although gutting for Taggie that both her choices then immediately went off and vibed with other women.'
Rivals doesn't shy away from the messiness of the era too, of the poisonous societal attitudes that bled into the decade: the homophobia, the sexual abuse and exploitation and the objectification of women. There are storylines that, its executive producer and writer Dominic Treadwell-Collins, has admitted were a hot topic of discussion in the writers' room. 'We talked a lot about the groping scene between Taggie and Rupert and whether we could show that on screen and, yes, we sat in the writer's room and wriggled that out,' Treadwell-Collins told the Rivals podcast. 'Some of the younger writers said, "You can't keep that in because we would never want Rupert and Taggie to get together if he has groped her."' And we said well he's got to change, that's got to stay in, it's a comment on the 1980s and these men.'
The 1980s were a decade of immense change. They were bookmarked with huge technological advances that evolved into the rapid digital developments that have become commonplace today. The fictional characters of Rivals, many of whom were inspired by real-life people, would in reality only have had a few years before their lives changed too, the same way that others alive at the time did. But if we can take anything from the show that has got people feeling all nostalgic — many of whom, like me, didn't even exist in the 1980s — it's that living in a life free from digital surveillance and infinite record-keeping looks almost too good to be true. And as an outsider peeking in, maybe that's because it was.
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