Rivals season two: Sex, betrayal and villainy in the English countryside
Rivals isn’t guilty pleasure, it’s just pure pleasure, and the second season will have you screaming for more.
It took almost 10 minutes before the first full frontal nude shot in the second season of Rivals, but this raunchy British series has lost none of its verve or cheek.
Audacious and delicious, Rivals is a high-end soap opera that takes the guilty out of guilty pleasure. This is just pure pleaaasurrrre, and you can shout that from the rooftops without any shame.
Everything here is about celebrating excess, and the series somehow manages to make being over-the-top both a sin and a virtue. It’s genius, and its many seductions will entrap you through and through.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Adapted from Jilly Cooper’s brazen and saucy books, the first season of Rivals burst onto our screens almost two years ago with a mile-high club session (complete with bare buttocks thrusting) aboard a Concorde in its first shot. That was declarative.
It may be set among the posh set of the English countryside, but its tea and biscuits are heaped on top of bawdy sexcapades and sneering vendettas.
If you don’t re-familiarise yourself with the exploits of the previous season, it actually takes a beat to remember which of the show’s characters are sleeping with whom, and who they’re actually married to and who they’re having an affair with. Honestly, no judgement, that’s part of its vicarious thrills.
The setting is the fictional county of Rutshire in the real, picturesque region of the Cotswolds. It’s the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher is in charge and more is more (unless you’re a working class miner, in which case, well, you know, not that such people are part of this world).
The two opposing camps are led by Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant, chewing on every moustache-twirling beat) and playboy and former Olympian Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell).
Tony, who married into his title, owns a TV network and revels in wielding his media power to get exactly what he wants, all the time. The only person with any hold over him is his wife Monica (Claire Rushbrook), proper landed gentry whose authority comes from low whispers and centuries of institutional elitism.
At the end of the previous season, Tony had been clonked on the head with a heavy award, blood pooling on the ground. You can’t kill characters like Tony, and definitely not after just one season, and he’s back on his feet, escalating his villainy.
The would-be manslaughterer/murderer was Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), an American TV producer who had been sleeping with Tony and had also started something with Rupert.
Rupert is sleeping with, had slept with or is crushing on half the female cast, a real sexual gourmand with an insatiable appetite. It’s indicative of Rivals’ writing and Hassell’s performance that Rupert is the bad guy here.
He’s a libertine, and overflowing with charisma, and it didn’t hurt that one of the promo shots in the first season was of Hassell with an intense stare on his face, shirt unbuttoned and flowing, and holding the leads of six dogs. Hawt.
Rupert and his pals including rich benefactor Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer, playing a sweet businessman) and former BBC reporter Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner, all fiery Irish defiance) have started a rival TV franchise, and they’re going after Tony in more ways than one.
The media battle is just a narrative device to set the characters against each other, although it certainly reveals how much you can frame someone’s public image if you own and control a mass communication tool. This was the 1980s, remember.
Only the first three episodes of the second season were made available for review, but from the tease so far, it’s already a happy return to Rutshire.
The writing is sharp and sometimes draws blood, and it’s adroitly plotted. Set-pieces such as a frenetic polo match or the comedy-of-errors dinner party kitchen marry spectacle with opportunities to move the story and the characters forward.
For a series that has so many characters in its ensemble, which also includes Declan’s daughter Taggie (Bella Maclean), Declan’s actor wife Maud (Victoria Smurfit), TV presenter Sarah (Emily Atack) and closeted producer Charles (Gary Lamont), Rivals keeps all the balls in the air.
Come for the impropriety but stay for the brilliant storytelling.
Rivals season two is streaming on Disney from May 15
