Rivals: A delightfully naughty romp
Review Overview
Cast
8Characters
8Chemistry
8David Farnor | On 19, Jan 2025
Is there a record for the number of times sex is mentioned in a TV show? Whatever the record might have been, Rivals on Disney+ UK has almost definitely broken it. The show, based on Jilly Cooper’s notorious novels from the 1980s, lives up to the naughty reputation of its source material – and then some.
The series follows a group of people connected to the TV industry in Rutshire. Kind of the small screen is Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), whose franchise Corinium is a commercial TV operation that is basically like the Cotswolds’ answer to ITV. Tony is not a nice man – and when your main villain is literally called “Baddingham”, you know exactly the kind of watch you’re in for.
And yet Dominic Treadwell-Collins and the writing team manage a surprising balance of knowing trash, self-aware satire and earnest soap opera – a balancing act that’s so impossible to pull off that the whole thing is a deceptively clever affair. It takes wit and wiles to make a TV so relentlessly bawdy.
Lord Tony, naturally, isn’t happy with merely being successful, and his greed and ambition set the stage for a tale of desire, avarice and its consequenecs. Tony’s first move to up his own wealth and power is to hire Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), a hotshot American producer who is as ruthless as he is – they bond over jointly climbing the ladder of success, as well as climbing on each other, despite Tony’s long-standing marriage to Monica (Claire Rushbrook). They then bring on board Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), a no-nonsense journalist with an eye for a headline-making scandal, and give him a talk show that’s an instant hit.
Top of the wishlist for guests? Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), a politician playboy who just so happens to be Tony’s nemesis. As their rivalry seeps into Corinium’s business, that inability to separate the personal and the professional – Tony isn’t comfortable if he isn’t dominating others with his authority – immediately begins to sour everything around Tony. David Tennant is gloriously wicked as the petty, pathetic figure, who teeters just on the edge of being sympathetically tragic, before finding a new way to be ghastly and manipulative to someone else.
All this would be fun enough, but the show’s only just getting started. Declan’s married to Maud (Victoria Smurfit), an actress who has reluctantly moved away from London, and they have two daughters – including Taggie (Bella Maclean), who immediately catches the eye of Rupert. Also on the fringes of this world is working-class electronics guru Freddie Jones (Dannie Dyer), who clashes with the snobbery around him – and clashes in another way entirely with the unassuming Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson), a novelist who writes smutty books and is married to Corinium’s former star presenter, James (the amusingly vain Oliver Chris).
What unfolds is a web of revenge, deceit and sex – whipped up in a frenzy of croquet, drink, helicopters and sex. The cast are all clearly having a ball, with Aidan Turner’s principled reporter a charismatic stand-out, along with the similarly driven Rupert, given surprising depth by Alex Hassell. Together with Freddie, who has a lot to prove, they become an unlikely yet natural alliance in the competing corner to Tony and his empire – and part of the fun lies in seeing the unexpected chemistry that forms between people on the same side and on opposing sides.
Underlying the frolicking and people frothing at the mouth is a deceptively shrewd obersvation of human nature, but also an understanding that escapism is a very natural indulgence. And, amid the superficiality, there’s real heart to be found, as Katherine Parkinson and Danny Dyer’s overlooked outsiders find a warm comfort and connection that’s more sincere than anything else Lord Baddingham’s put on people’s living rooms. What a delightful romp it is.