Warning: Rivals spoilers ahead.
Welcome to ‘Showtime with Emily Maddick’, in which GLAMOUR'S Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director brings a unique perspective to the month's most hyped film or TV show. For October's instalment, Emily dissects the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's 1988 so-called ‘bonkbuster’, Rivals. While there had been some concern that recreating Cooper's notoriously sexist world could be problematic in 2024, Emily argues that this fabulously-executed TV show is not only surprisingly progressive, but also a harbinger of #MeToo – exposing toxic workplace standards thirty years before the global movement that held so many men to account.
I love Jilly Cooper. I have always loved Jilly Cooper, and I really love the new Disney+ adaptation of her 1988 ‘bonkbuster’ Rivals. It’s a debauched, excessive and escapist breath of fresh air in these dismal times; a televisual gorge of glamour, greed – and, yes… gratuitous, unbridled bonking. It’s also, more seriously, representative of a time nearly forty years ago when sexism, homophobia and racism was rife. A time when men, especially in the fictionalised Cooper Cotswolds confection of Rutshire, often treated women as little more than pieces of meat – here’s looking at you Mr Campbell-Black. (Reader, please note, this is not why I love Jilly Cooper, so do bear with me.)
Since it was announced that Disney+ would be recreating the goings-on at the fictional TV network Corinium, complete with a stellar cast including David Tennant, Aidan Turner and Emily Atack, there has been talk about how problematic Cooper’s books could seem today. Many thought that recreating the 1980s Cooperverse in 2024 could be seen as regressive and tone deaf – after nearly forty years of progress. Which, if handled incorrectly, it could very well have been.
Thankfully, this is not the case. In fact, in many ways, Rivals taps into the zeitgeist of right now. It's straight from the playbook of the recent smash hits that are Saltburn and The White Lotus (even down to a similar theme tune and opening credits) with its pitch-perfect skewering of the British class system and the filthy rich (filthy being the operative word here.) Its plot – focusing on the behind-the-scenes machinations of a TV station – draws comparisons to Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston’s brilliant The Morning Show or even the colossus of all recent television series that is Succession.
A guide to who's who in the Jilly Cooper adaption.
But Rivals is camp, self-aware and blisteringly witty – and has a banging ‘80s soundtrack to boot. Never mind the blue eyeshadow, perms and shoulder pads galore.
As The Sunday Times wrote at the weekend: “Everyone involved in the show has every right to congratulate themselves on a project that is ultimately perfect,” adding, “Rivals is perfectly unserious, but it fully respects the intelligence of the audience.”
And I couldn’t agree more. Not only has the TV adaptation modernised Jilly Cooper’s original book to be more progressive, incorporating LGBT storylines and changing the race of one of the leads – American producer, Cameron Cole (played by Nafessa Williams) – but it has also unveiled how Cooper’s ‘bonkbuster’ can actually be seen as a harbinger for the #MeToo movement.
For it perfectly exemplifies the toxic, sexist power dynamics and sexual assaults that many women in the workplace had to endure in order to get ahead in that era. The very practices and circumstances that would eventually be exposed, thirty years later in 2017, with the worldwide #MeToo movement.
Nicole Kidman's new Netflix romp is six delicious episodes of wealthy people behaving absolutely atrociously.
Rivals is a historical piece of fiction that very much delivers the realities of a society urgently needing to change. It shows powerful, ambitious and intelligent women trying to navigate their way through the limitations of the time they are living in – and the often appalling behaviour of the men they work for, marry or sleep with.
Case in point, an impeccable interaction between top journalist Declan O’Hara (played by a marvellously-moustached Aidan Turner) and his new boss Cameron Cole – whom Declan had, before meeting, assumed was a man. “Where the fuck is this Cameron guy I’m supposed to report to?” he demands on his first day in the job. The perfectly-poised Cameron introduces herself and retorts: “You were expecting a man, possibly a queer, which you would have endured, but certainly not a woman – and god forbid a Black one”.
However, as powerful and empowered as Cameron Cole may come across, she is still (spoiler alert) ultimately sleeping with the boss – the odious Lord Tony Baddingham (played by David Tennant) – in order to retain her position. What's more, she also later succumbs to the seductions of Cooper’s legendary lothario, professional polo player turned Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell).
Yet Cooper is never judgemental or naive when it comes to her female characters. And one of the many reasons she is so universally adored (mainly by women) is that she approaches the complexities of sex with an emotional sensitivity so rarely seen before at the time she was writing. Cooper also prioritises the importance of female pleasure and desire in a groundbreaking way that paved the way for the representation of female sexuality in shows such as the game-changing behemoth, Sex and the City. (Sidenote, Samantha Jones would have eaten Rupert Campbell-Black for breakfast.)
“Welcome to the naughtiest show on television.”
Rivals also explores the issue of consent with a sensitivity and intelligence that feels ahead of its time, acknowledging the injustice of the double standards that men and women are held to.
For example when Daisy, a young member of the production team, is raped by a prominent member of the television board – a vicar no less – and is then promptly victim-blamed by Lord Tony Baddingham (“Are you sure you didn’t lead him on?”), an older female colleague offers her some advice. “This terrible thing that has happened to you is your secret, but also your weapon to use it to get what you want from them,” she urges. “Don’t be sad, be angry.”
Of course, not all the men are odious and loathsome – and Aidan Turner’s shouty Declan O’Leary taking down the rapist vicar is a fantastic moment. Although interestingly, Daisy does not see it that way – embarrassed that he is exposing her assault. Similarly, Danny Dyer’s delightful tech millionaire, Freddie Jones, while not always adhering to the sanctity of his marriage vows (who does in the Cooperverse?), still manages to come across as one of the only male characters with a moral compass. All the while navigating the class snobbery constantly levelled at him with dignity.
For of course, as well as chronicling the sexism and misogyny of the eighties, Cooper’s genius also lies in so expertly understanding the complexities and nuances of the extraordinarily unique British class system. Indeed, the show’s executive producer, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the man responsible for the 20-year campaign to bring Rivals to life on screen, has likened Cooper to another famous female author, also renowned for her adept chronicling of British society.
“I genuinely think Jilly Cooper is the Jane Austen of our times,” he said in a recent interview. “These are the books people will study, in the future, when they want to understand what the Eighties were like. Jilly comes across as fluffy and lovely – but she’s got a steely eye when it comes to the sexism, the homophobia, the racism, class. You think it’s all lavish and flirty – and it is – but then, on every third page, she’ll come and kick you in the shins. But every time I pitched it, people would be like ‘Jilly Cooper? She’s just… a bit naff?’ And it was always men who said it. But I bet if they’d asked their wives, they would say, ‘I LOVE HER! MAKE IT NOW!’"
And thank the gods of Rutshire, they finally did.
Rivals is streaming now on Disney+
For more from GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director, Emily Maddick, follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick.
