As the weather turns dismal, there’s no better time to unleash eight cheerfully lurid episodes of sexed-up 80s nostalgia complete with roaring business bastards and relentless bonking. We could all do with some fun on these dark nights and – from the evidence of Disney+’s new adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 1998 novel Rivals – no one is having more fun than the cast.
Opening on Concorde as two characters, loudly join the mile-high club to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love”, bare buttocks going for the Bafta, it announces itself as unashamedly camp. David Tennant is ruthlessly ambitious TV boss Lord Baddingham, supported by an army of British acting talent including Danny Dyer, Katherine Parkinson, Emily Atack and Aidan Turner as the various mansion-dwellers of Rutshire who compete with each other for wealth, influence and large portions of extra-marital sex.
Enter Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), the man every woman wants and every husband fears. The former Olympic show-jumper rattles around an empty mansion, lovelessly rutting other men’s wives and preferring dogs to people. That is until he spies young Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), the daughter of TV journalist Declan O’Hara (Turner), and finds himself helplessly falling for her.
Hassell has more than enough charisma for the part, his features hewn from rock and his swagger on point throughout. But his and Taggie’s innocent romance gets lost in the more hardcore demands of his high-turnover love life. He has a lot of buttock acting and naked tennis to get through before he’s ready to settle down and Taggie is left making big eyes at him across woody thickets and trying to tempt him with her cooking.
The plot arrives far too late and revolves around the fight for regional TV franchise, Corinium, owned by Lord Baddingham. In the first episode, he hires hotshot Irish news man Declan to front their new interview series while US executive Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams) is flown in to whip Baddingham’s TV output into shape and also his marital organs.
The true rivalry kicks off over four hours later when Campbell-Black mounts his own bid to steal the franchise. The lack of focus feels like a fan’s desperation to pack the entire contents of Cooper’s book into the show and while her other fans will probably adore it, newcomers to Rutshire might find the plot overcrowded and the narrative thrust lost.
While Baddingham vs Campbell-Black is kept on a low flame, romances and side plots fire off all over the place. It feels like showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins (previously of EastEnders) struggles to pick a focus, so throws in every plotline he can, vowing to pick them up again later. His approach bears fruit in the final two episodes which are a veritable fireworks display of resolutions and pay-offs, but the point of it all gets fudged along the way.
Among the bonking montages, slivers of more serious storyline are squeezed somewhat uncomfortably including a rape, a necessarily covert gay love story and the beginnings of Section 28, which forbade the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools. The romance is sweetly acted, if a bit skimmed over (thanks to the over-packed plot), but the rest feels like a 2024 afterthought sitting oddly among its more panto surroundings.
The unexpectedly warm heart of the show comes in the shape of a will-they-won’t-they romance between downtrodden Lizzie Vereker (Parkinson) and modest new-money tech millionaire Freddie Jones (Dyer). Their unspoken passion builds, Parkinson deploying her unmatched talent for pathos and nuance. Finally, a grain of something to invest in.
There’s a tonal tug-of-war going on in Rivals. Jilly Cooper and her fans know that this is supercharged Carry On. But the very British campery tugs hard on the leash held by the giant US corporation who possibly paid for something more sophisticated. The two never quite agree with each other, leaving the overall finish uneven.
The opening scene in an aeroplane toilet – a woman’s hand furiously pumping the soap dispenser while she’s vigorously penetrated – should have set the tone. Instead, the series flips between confused sincerity and all-out sex farce making for a glossy puddle of a show, seemingly unwilling to admit its own quite joyful lack of depth. If only the Disney bosses had been brave enough to open the stable door, Rivals might have been able to run to the trashy paddock wherein it clearly longs to frolick.
‘Rivals’ is streaming on Disney+ from Friday
