‘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!
In short, all is as it should be. Cooper’s 1988 bestseller has not been Disneyfied. The streaming service has kept the sex, excess, the fabulous awfulness of the people and at least as much of Cooper’s always under-acknowledged talent for observation, parsing of social mores and her emotional intelligence as any adaptation ever manages – and a lot more than some. Above all, it keeps the rambunctious joy of the thing. Even the naked tennis scene works. And if you can do that, you can do anything.
As with the book, all the pieces are quickly and smoothly in play. The O’Haras – Declan, his hot ex-actor wife Maud (Victoria Smurfit) and their two hot daughters (slightly problematic now, but not then, which is where Disney is firmly requiring us to be) 20-year-old Taggie (Bella Maclean) and the younger Caitlin (Catriona Chandler) relocate to a Rutshire mansion over the way from Campbell-Black’s den – and tennis court – of iniquity. Soon they are all more or less in his thrall. Maud is less impressed with the other members of their new set. “Talking about who’s got the longest fucking driveway and with wives who haven’t had an orgasm since pony club camp!” Actually, that might be a two exclamation mark line.
Declan and Cameron are at each other’s throats – she wants ratings and splashes, he wants integrity and a desk on set. I’m sure they’ll keep it professional though. Lord Baddingham is consumed with class envy and rage over Campbell-Black’s Teflon coating of privilege and charm but is busy wheeling and dealing to protect his own interests while he waits for a chance to unseat his nemesis. In particular, he is trying to woo electronics mogul Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer, perfectly cast but in a terrible wig. Why is there never any budget for decent wigs?), who has taken a shine to gentle bonkbuster author Lizzie, who is unhappily married to the awful James (Oliver Chris), the former jewel in Corinium’s crown whose nose has been put out of joint by the advent of golden boy Declan, especially after his first interview is a headline-making barnstormer.
In the same way I never liked to think of all the painstaking work that went into drawing the cartoons I used to watch on Sunday mornings, I don’t like to dwell on how much effort must have gone in to judging how much of the 80s’ attitudes could be retained without offending modern sensitivities and disposed of without ruining the essence of the thing. But it has all paid off. Cooper’s books are about joyfully indulging your appetites and knowing that literary (or televisual) escapism is not a sin but a very necessary part of being a human. Disney has taken the business of bringing her Rutshire vision to life just as seriously and with just as light a touch as they needed. Champagne all round, I say.
• Rivals is on Disney+ now.
