Exploring the Success Behind 'Rivals'

The green pastures and cosy cottages of the Cotswolds, paired with the inner workings of a television franchise, seem a setting more sleepy than sexy. Yet, in Jilly Cooper’s 1988 bonkbuster Rivals, sex, hedonism, board meetings, and bluebell woods can all coexist. 

In Disney's recent screen adaptation of Rivals, all of Cooper’s sexy, camp, silliness remains. The story follows a group of rich, posh, and debauched people who either work at, or orbit around, the Cotswolds’ regional television franchise, Corinium.  

In the show’s opening scene, we meet Rupert Campbell-Black, a retired Olympic show jumper who is now a Conservative MP. His character is almost too caricatured: an old-money type with a huge ancestral Cotswold mansion, multiple black labradors, a fox-hunting habit, and an obsession with sha***ng other people’s wives. The first ten seconds of the show display Campbell-Black joining the mile-high club in a Concorde aeroplane toilet, his thrusting bare arse pointed at the camera. 

When we return to the ground, landing in the charmingly quaint Cotswold village of Rutshire, we see that morals are no more tight here than in the sky. Among the upper echelons of the Cotswolds’ ruling class, adultery is commonplace, sex constant, drunken revelry perpetual, and tennis is only played naked. A bad meeting means a bottle of whiskey and a marital spat means loud sex with a coworker. 

Pleasure unifies all in Rivals. Life is about hedonism for the rich and debauched members of the Corinium television franchise. Lunch meetings are taken with several bottles of wine, and baths with a cigar. Freed from the 21st-century concepts of clean living, morning pilates, and green juices, this lot parties hard, constantly. 

Life is all about excess in Rutshire; no one appears to rise before at least 11am, probably still sleeping off the hangover from the night before. The show is set against the backdrop of the Thatcherite ‘80s, when, for the few, there was money to be made and thus, money to be spent. Opulent black-tie parties, fox-hunting, pheasant shoots, and landing a helicopter on the lawn of one’s mansion are among the activities that the Rutshire set enjoy. 

There is a heart-warming love story at the centre of this haze of hedonism, however, and it is not the one billed to the audience as the big-hitter. The show appears structured around Campbell-Black’s playboy-turned-nice-guy storyline, and the will-they-won’t-they relationship between him and 20 year-old, sweetly innocent Taggie, daughter of Corinium presenter Declan. He spends most of the show worried about breaking her heart, or, if he goes anywhere near her, her father breaking him. The show increased her age by two years from being eighteen in Cooper’s novel. The age gap still felt apparent, though, and the couple had little in common as a result. He also slept with her mum in episode two, but that’s by the by. 

My favourite relationship of the show was instead the slow-burn between Lizzie, the sweet and entirely unnoticed wife of television presenter James (he actually winces when she dons black lingerie in an attempt to seduce him), and Freddie, the husband of over-bearing Valerie, who doesn’t allow him to eat carbs and consistently tells him he is too fat. Whilst, yes, these two are also already married, their getting-together is not about revenge or selfish pleasure-seeking but instead a quest to truly be loved and noticed after years of being downtrodden by unloving partners. 

Rivals is full of ‘80s nostalgia, from its ear-wormy soundtrack, featuring The Human League, Blondie, and Wham!, to its shoulder-padded, taffeta-covered wardrobe. The show has, however, not been wrapped up in Disney bubble wrap when covering less savoury, more outdated aspects of the social and political climate of the 1980s. The show engages with 1980s sociopolitics: the hushing up of rape to protect a male business partner, the daily racial microaggressions endured by Cameron Cook (the young, black, female powerhouse of a television presenter), blatant classism, and a bit of casual groping. By not completely woke-ifying the 1980s, Rivals does well to retain veracity to the cultural setting it intends to reflect. It is not all sunshine, bluebells, and horseback rides in Cooper’s world, after all. 

Illustration by Grace Robinson