15 October 2024

The unadulterated pleasures of Rivals

This Disney+ take on Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles is very funny and deeply satisfying. And what a multiplicity of backsides!

By Rachel Cooke

Disney+

Oh, the sheer, unadulterated perkiness of Rivals! As I type, I bounce, like Rupert Campbell-Black in flagrante. Some part of me has obviously missed this: the primordial realm of Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire where all things are frolicsome and simple, offered without piety or quibble only for our enjoyment. From the series’ first moments, my (female) gaze has been utterly unabashed. What a multiplicity of backsides are here! If Rupert (an immaculate Alex Hassell) has one that brings to mind best butter toffee, sinewy and bronzed, it also – ahem – has some pretty stiff competition. In the early-morning light of a country bedroom, Declan O’Hara’s (an ideal Aidan Turner) is as soft and pale as caster sugar: a chiaroscuro thrill rivalled only by the Yeats he spouts as foreplay.

But I must calm myself. This is a review, not a naughty calendar. Rivals was published in 1988, the second book in the Rutshire Chronicles, and it belongs to another time: Concorde was in the sky, Chris de Burgh was in the charts and, most amazingly of all, it was then (just about) possible for readers to accept that a sex god could be a Tory MP (faced with the extreme pulchritude of Campbell-Black, who in Rivals is the new minister of sport, we pushed from our minds the various gargoyles who sat in Thatcher’s cabinet). The genius of this adaptation, I think – in context, it’s a kind of bravery – is that its producers have decided simply to go with it: to treat it as a period piece, as if it were Vanity Fair or The Forsyte Saga. It’s very funny; its deepest impulses are satirical. But no one’s winking at the camera, let alone worrying about giving offence. Its stars seem only to be hell bent on giving the performance of their lives.

The action centres on a Rutshire-based ITV franchise, Corinium, whose boss, Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant, honestly never better) has just poached O’Hara, the BBC’s star journalist – thus facilitating the arrival in the county of his actress wife, Maud (Victoria Smurfit), and his children, the most important of whom for our purposes is Taggie (Bella Maclean). All you need to know really, though, is that everyone is shagging (AKA bonking) everyone else. Actually, scratch that. Baddingham is indeed having it away with his top producer, Cameron (Nafessa Williams), while his wife, Lady Monica (Claire Rushbrook), snuggles with the dog, but most of the other characters are either being tupped by Rupert – first up, Sarah (Emily Atack), the brassy wife of Paul Stratton MP (Rufus Jones) – or longing to be next on his list. But they may have to wait. Taggie has somehow caught Rupert’s eye – and yes, she’s only 18. And yes, someone does tell Declan his new chatshow will be up against Top of the Pops, which will require him to be “more popular than Jimmy Savile”.

It’s all deeply satisfying. I love Oliver Chris as the Corinium presenter, James Vereker (the hair, the sweaters, the tragic ego); Katherine Parkinson as his neglected wife, Lizzie (mournful in Laura Ashley); and Danny Dyer as Freddie Jones, the nouveau riche millionaire who’s quietly wooing her with chocolate (Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut). What marvels of timing, varying degrees of sincerity and carefully delineated social class they are. You’d describe their triangle as Pinter-esque if you weren’t having such an outstandingly good time.

The action rolls at the crazed pitch of Falcon Crest, only with more valances and crappier cars; virtually every scene ends in a cliff-hanger, a face frozen in amazement or expectation. But we’re in the English countryside, and sex is the thing because it’s good, clean fun, and everyone loves a double entendre. “How delightfully ambitious of you, little brother,” says Baddingham to his half-sibling Basil, on finding him engaged in a foursome (or maybe it was more-some, I couldn’t quite see). “Are you ready for me to come down your chimney?” asks Rupert, as he slowly unbuttons his Santa outfit on Christmas morning. A montage in which everyone gets what they want is soundtracked by Chas & Dave’s “Rabbit”, and as you smile at this you realise that you, too, are getting what you want: a night off from overproduced boutique nonsense; permission to laugh at the snobbish, the silly and the filthy – and also, of course, openly to admire Rupert Campbell-Black’s bum.