‘Welcome to Rutshire!” announces Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson), one of its calmer denizens and the only one with enough time between champagne-quaffing and nethers-slapping to ease a new family’s passage into the bonkers, bonking Cotswolds set with conventional niceties. And what a welcome it’s been!
Disney+’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s infamous 1980s bonkbuster starts as gloriously as it means to go on. Within the first 15 minutes we have the ne plus ultra of cads and bounders (also cabinet minister and former super-duper show jumper) Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) banging a journalist (“the first not-quite-a-lady of Fleet Street”) in Concorde’s loos as it breaks the sound barrier and corks pop. We also have star broadcast journalist Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) breaking a story about the deputy prime minister (Rufus Jones) having a lover, plus David Tennant’s Lord Tony Baddingham – the clue is in the name – poaching him and a ruthless American producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams) to boost his UK TV franchise Corinium. Not to mention croquet, helicopters landing on the lawn, riding to hounds and not a line of dialogue that doesn’t end in an exclamation mark!
