Rivals reviewed - Just how racy is the 80s 'bonkbuster' in 2024?
Disney+’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, from her bestselling Rutshire Chronicles, is due to land on the streamer on 18 October.
Thirty-six years on from the book’s first release in 1988, the eight-part drama is one of the most anticipated TV moments of the year, not least because it has Dame Jilly Cooper’s seal of approval – she said she was ‘ecstatic’ to get the call from Disney+ that they were adapting her book and has called the casting ‘immaculate’.
Set in fictional Rutshire (somewhere deep in the Cotswolds), lives Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), controller of Corinium Television, Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), ex Olympic showjumper-turned-Tory MP, and Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), TV journalist and heart throb who’s just jumped ship from the BBC to Corinium.
The story centres around these three warring men, their romantic entanglements and the drama that follows the power-grabbing social elite of 1980s England.
With excitement for the series at a feverish level, two GH writers from different generations – one who read the book when it was first released and one who wasn’t born for another seven years – sat down to watch the first episode, and compare notes.
Millenial Georgia Green, GH’s senior celebrity writer, watches Rivals with fresh eyes, having never read a Jilly Cooper novel.
It redefines the ‘bonkbuster’ trope
"Although I’ve never read Jilly Cooper’s iconic Rutshire Chronicles, I’m aware of the books and their ‘bonkbusting’ reputation. But how racy were they really prepared to go in the 80s? Plus, having seen the trailer for Rivals, I was under the impression the series had glossed over the smuttier parts of the book and focused on the drama. Oh, how wrong I was.
The drama, humour and wit is undeniably there, but eight seconds in Alex Hassel’s Rupert Campbell-Black and his current fling, tabloid journalist Beattie Johnson (Annabel Scholey), are at in the loo of Concorde.
It's tricky to remember who marries who?
A book has pages and pages to introduce a reader to its cast of characters, but a TV show has 50 minutes to do this, while also getting some serious plot underway. Featuring a large ensemble cast, I struggled to keep up with who’s with who in the first episode, but I think this is mainly due to the fact that the people they’re sleeping with aren’t necessarily their spouse. In fact, I soon learn that’s a rarity in Rutshire, and if they are in bed together (or casually playing tennis naked), then there’s a high probability they’re not married.
Smartphones have fundamentally changed us
At one point, an entire lawn party of guests drunkenly dance to The Birdie Song, which reminds me of two things. One, the story my parents tell me of doing The Birdie Song dance in the middle of their wedding breakfast – was the song really that culturally significant in the 80s? And two, people were much more willing to embarrass themselves in the name of having fun when there was no chance of someone capturing it on their phone and uploading it to social media.
80s fashion was... questionable?
Men wore brown, women wore an eye-wateringly fluorescent kaleidoscope of colours. That’s what I learnt about 80s fashion from watching the first episode of Rivals, anyway. Some period-set TV shows do a ‘rose-tinted glasses’ take on the fashion of the time, but I applaud Rivals for not shying away from the sartorial horrors of the decade. There are some triumphs in there too – I love Taggie’s (Declan O’Hara’s daughter played by Bella Maclean) bomber jacket.
I’ll admit – the Rivals lens does make the 80s look like a rip-roaringly good time. But already in the first episode I can see sexism and racism are going to be the other main characters in this story. While I’d love to go back to a time when we weren’t ruled by the phones in our pockets (and the music was arguably better, apart from The Birdie Song), I’m less keen for first-hand experience of a world where blatant sexism and racism where par for the course.
Gen X Sarah Maber, GH’s health and features editor, watches Rivals after reading the book for the first time as a teenager.
Everyone is having so much fun
"In the 80s, people were sexist. They went hunting. They swore. They wore their money on their, er, shoulder pads. I’m not entirely sure that everyone was committing loads of riotous adultery as I was 18 when Rivals came out – but here’s hoping! I remember sitting in my bedroom devouring the Rutshire Chronicles series - falling in love with macho Declan O'Hara and sexy journo Janey Lloyd Fox, who had a penchant for gin, cigarettes… and missing deadlines. In the Jilly-verse, everyone had so much FUN and it made growing up seem fun, too. Disney +'s Rivals captures this and then some. I’m not surprised it comes Jilly Cooper-approved.
The casting is almost perfect
With Jilly Cooper’s perfectly drawn characters, anyone who read the book in the 80s has a very clear idea what their Rupert C-B, Tony Baddingham, Cameron Cook, Declan O'Hara and so on look like. Totally en pointe are unhappily married Lizzie Vereker and self-made millionaire Freddie Jones; ditto Maud O'Hara and Caitlin. But my Declan is more rugged than Aidan Turner; my Tony Baddingham more imposing than David Tennant; and my Rupert C-B very definitely blonde and blue-eyed (though the dark-haired, dark-eyed Alex Hassell who plays him has the swagger down to a T).
Buckle up for the bonking
From a bare-buttocked Rupert Campbell-Black bonking away in a loo on Concorde to Maud and Declan O’Hara falling out then ripping each other’s clothes off, the sex is everything I imagined it to be. Rivals fans will be pleased to know that the scene of naked tennis is faithfully rendered, complete with a mortified Taggie O'Hara witnessing it. Warning – do not watch this with your teenage children, thinking it would be a lovely thing to share with them. They will hate you for it.
"Let’s get smashed!"
And smoke literally everywhere while we do! Everything in Rivals is turned up to 11, just as it should be – the booze, the cigars, the sex, the fashion, the hair, the swooning, the money, the dastardly plotting, actual hedgerows groaning with actual blackberries (probably). I forgot how perma-trollied everyone gets in the Jilly-verse, but I loved the moment Lizzie Vereker visits her new neighbours Maud and Declan O'Hara, and Maud sloshes champagne into tea cups at lunchtime, announcing ‘let’s get smashed’.
The soundtrack is spot on
From the aforementioned Concorde bonk (in time to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love), to Caitlin and Taggie O'Hara unpacking with Wham's Wham Rap (Enjoy What You Do?) in the background, it’s a true tribute to 80s music. Listen out for Paul Simon, The Bangles, the Eurythmics – and The Birdie Song, danced to enthusiastically by guests at Lord Tony Baddingham’s garden party. It’ll take you right back…
Rivals premieres 18 October exclusively on Disney+.
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