Be warned, nudity abounds in this gleeful adaptation. Cooper’s steamy novel has not been Disneyfied in the slightest, writes The Telegraph’s Anita Singh, who gave the series five stars.
As a statement of intent, the opening scene of Rivals (Disney+) is a humdinger. We’re presented with a shot of Rupert Campbell-Black’s naked behind as he ravishes a woman on Concorde with supersonic elan, soundtracked by Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love. When our hero retakes his seat, female passengers swooning in his wake, he is challenged about having sex in a toilet. “A loo,” Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) corrects. “Don’t be plebeian.”
Sex, class and the 1980s in one riotously OTT package, and we haven’t even got to the naked tennis yet. Settle down and enjoy.
Dispel any fears that Jilly Cooper’s book has been Disney-fied. There are no concessions to the times in which we live. Everyone commits adultery and smokes like a chimney. They hunt and shoot. People tell off-colour jokes and nobody pulls them up on it with a po-faced lecture about human rights.
The men are unapologetically macho. And in Campbell-Black, Cooper’s “handsomest man in England”, we have a Tory politician you’d actually want to sleep with. This show could do wonders for the Conservative Party.
The plot, somewhat improbably, creates high drama and sexual tension around an ITV franchise in the Cotswolds. Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) is the ruthless boss of Corinium. He hires fiery Irish journalist Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner, impressive moustache) as his star interviewer. O’Hara brings along Maud (Victoria Smurfit), his highly-strung wife, and Taggie (Bella Maclean), his Bambi-eyed daughter. All are neighbours of Campbell-Black, former Olympic show jumping champion turned Minister for Sport, who lives in a grand pile with his dogs.
The casting is a success. Jilly purists may note that Campbell-Black, in the book, was blond-haired and blue-eyed. Alex Hassell is neither of those things, but he has bags of charisma (and the author’s seal of approval). Hassell has said that, on set, “everyone was told, before I walked into the room, to treat me as if I was the most attractive man in the world, and that was extremely helpful”. Helpful to the audience too – when every woman on-screen flushes in his presence, it conditions us to feel the same way.
Campbell-Black is a bounder and a cad towards Taggie when they first meet but we end up rooting for a romance between them, despite the fact she’s only 20. Nobody could write a show now with that storyline and treat it as unproblematic, but Rivals sticks unapologetically to the spirit, and sexual politics, of the age in which it was written. There is only one modern update, which is that for every shot of naked female breasts, there is male nudity. A full-frontal scene on the tennis court may wear out the pause and rewind buttons on remote controls in some households.
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Advertise with NZME.Writer Dominic Treadwell-Collins has had fun with the period setting, and the benefit of hindsight. “The BBC have put Top of the Pops against us in the schedule. So you need to be more popular than Jimmy Savile,” Baddingham tells staff. The music choices are great, from Eurythmics and Frankie Goes to Hollywood to Paul Simon and The Bangles, although younger viewers may be baffled by a scene in which guests at a garden party dance enthusiastically to The Birdie Song.
Class runs through the story. Rutshire is full of frightful snobs, and the arrival of self-made electronics millionaire Freddie Jones and his wife prompts much sniggering. Danny Dyer was a shoo-in for the role, but he doesn’t overplay it and brings a surprising sweetness to his friendship with romantic novelist Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson). Laugh-out-loud comedy is provided by some of the supporting players, including Rufus Jones as a bumptious politician and Oliver Chris as a preening daytime TV presenter.
There are eight episodes. It sags a bit towards the end, when the script concerns itself more with the business of regional television franchises than love and lust and shirtless hunks. But, on the whole, it’s a marvellous antidote to modern life.
“Today there seems to be far less bonking,” lamented Cooper, 89, in a recent interview. Rivals makes up for it with sex scenes aplenty. But the show is more than just a romp: like the author herself, it has bags of heart.
Rivals is screening in New Zealand on Disney+ from October 18.
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