A love letter to Rivals by Jilly Cooper (and, technically, Disney+)

Author’s note: this is literally my first writing for sheer pleasure in quite some time, the reasons for which will become clear later. Bear with me, oh Get Lippie readers of yore, I’m rusty, and what follows is sheer self-indulgence. Basically: read on at your own risk.

Rivals: The Book

As a teen, I was obsessed with three things: the comedy of Billy Connolly; the music of Duran Duran (also – but for slightly less hormonal reasons – Def Leppard); and Jilly Cooper’s magnum opus, Rivals. I’d picked it up on a whim in the big Asda one Saturday afternoon simply because the paperback was on offer for £1 and it was all about the goings-on behind the scenes at a TV station. I was a TV obsessed teen anyway, it having been my babysitter from far too young an age, but from that random Saturday in the summer of 1988, I was doomed to become a lifelong Jilly fan.

I’ve re-read Rivals countless times since, and all the other “Rutshire” chronicles alongside, but Rivals was (and remains) my first real literary love. Indeed, I have certain sections of the book accidentally committed to memory*, which is quite a feat considering I don’t actually remember what day it is most of the time. I still have my tea-stained, dog-eared copy of that paperback somewhere, complete with the exploding spine it developed from having been read so often.

Why did I love Rivals so hugely? Set in the world of competing local TV franchises (and if that isn’t an elevator pitch that thrills you right down to your very core, and sends shivers up your spine, are you even human?) Rivals was, by turns, glamorous, bitchy, enthralling, exciting, saucy, sexy, highbrow, lowbrow (and all points in between), but above all, it was downright hilarious, and very, very British. Also, it had a star in Rupert Campbell Black, the ex-showjumper and now conservative MP, and, though I personally preferred the more intellectual and gentler Declan O’Hara, the chat show host, (and, not having read Riders previously), I thought RCB was a very charming though very recently reformed, rake. Reading Riders – set in the world of showjumping – was a bit of an eyeopener, but I’ll tackle that one another time. Rupert is, of course, the beating heart of the Rutshire Chronicles, whether he’s the lead character, or just peeping about in the background, and in Rivals, his love story with Taggie O’Hara (Declan’s dyslexic teen daughter) is just lovely. Imperfect and just slightly inappropriate, but lovely.

In fact, there’s a plethora of wonderful characters in Rivals, all of whom compete for your time and affection. From the adorable writer Lizzie Vereker, afflicted by her marriage to the idiotic TV presenter James (Richard Madeley who?), to the gloriously sensible Monica Baddingham, to Caitlin and Maud O’Hara (Declan’s younger daughter and actress wife, respectively) to, of course, Tony Baddingham and Cameron Cook, who, alongside Rupert and Declan, are the story’s main protagonists. All the characters are wonderful, fully rounded and fleshed out, and they’re all loveable – and detestable – in their own ways. I haven’t listed everyone here, because well, there are too many to mention. And I haven’t even got onto the real stars of the books, the animals! Who doesn’t love Gertrude?

In a nutshell, the (massively oversimplified) plot is thus: Tony and Cameron run “Corinium” a local TV station in “Rutshire” England, and Declan O’Hara has been poached away from the BBC to star in his own series for Corinium. After a brief period of corporate bliss, Tony reveals his true colours, things go wrong, hi-jinks ensue, and Declan, alongside Rupert, feels forced to set up “Venturer”, a rival TV consortium in order to oust Tony and Corinium from the TV screens. But to say that is it plot-wise is really only scratching the surface of what is going on in Rivals. Along the way to the unsuspectedly thrilling tender process (and I say this as an ex-accountant who has suffered through many) there are operettas, garden openings, dinner parties, naked tennis, hunt balls, pigeon shoots, trips to Spain, backstabbings, so many extra-marital love affairs you’ll need flowchart, and So. Much. Sex.

But Rivals is so much, much, much more than the plot. Alongside what is intended as a corporate thriller (Will Venturer win the franchise and stop Tony? Will Cameron betray Corinium and join Venturer after she’s been seduced by Rupert? Will Taggie finish making those 200 shepherd’s pies on time on New Years Eve?) is a beautiful, beautiful portrait of a very particular type of Englishness at a specific period in time. At its heart Rivals is really a presentation of the British Class system. Leaving aside for a moment her occasionally execrable attempts at rendering different (ie “lower class”) accents phonetically, Jilly expertly skewers the motivations and aspirations (or not) of each aspect of the class system almost perfectly, and the interplays of each is fascinating – and hilarious – as a result.

It hasn’t always aged well though, I must say. Reading it with today’s eyes can be a troubling process. Some of the politics is a little … less than progressive, and the lack of feminism, alongside the continual body shaming, and in particular the sexualisation of the school-age characters is occasionally (far) beyond the pale, and some characters get away with things they’d be cancelled (and possibly jailed) for today, but taken as a period piece – and, much as it pains me to think of things within my lifetime like this, you do have to read this as a period piece today – it’s a generally a pretty good portrait of what (some of the) thinking was like back then. This doesn’t forgive any of the troubling sections, but it can help explain some of it. The workplace was a rough place for women back in the 80’s, and for that matter, well into the 90’s too. Still can be in many cases.

A real product of its time then, Rivals was published during a high point for “bonkbusters”. For example, prior to reading Rivals (and amongst many, many others), I’d also read and loved Mistral’s Daughter and Princess Daisy, both by Judith Krantz, Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins and, of course, Lace by Shirley Conran, then Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews and while each of those was brilliant and memorable in their own ways (I am trying really hard here not to make a joke about goldfish, apologies), none of them had that peculiar British-ness that define’s Jilly’s work overall, and definitely none of them were as funny as Rivals specifically. But, one thing those books did have that Rivals didn’t, was a miniseries.

Miniseries were HUGE in the 80’s, and I loved them all, from that one where the crocodile ate a woman’s face and she came back after plastic surgery to wreak revenge on her friends (I may be misremembering that one) through to the one where aliens ate hamsters in a quest to steal earth’s water but were defeated by some red powder in a hot air balloon (ditto), to the one where a porn actress tortures four ex-pupils of a finishing school in a fancy hotel room in order to find out who her mother is (and if you’re a woman over the age of forty who can’t recognise this one, god help you), to the one where Richard Chamberlain plays a priest who has sexytimes with a woman he met as a child, and helped raise (it’s okay, she’s above the age of consent when they do it!) then nearly becomes pope after stealing her inheritance (ditto misremembering), miniseries for block- and bonk-buster books were real Event Telly in the 80s and 90s. But for Rivals, and Jilly Cooper more generally, there was none**.

Which brings me neatly to:

 

Rivals: the TV series (Disney+)

You have simply no idea how happy watching the recent series of Rivals has made me. Some initial casting apprehensions aside, let me just say that however much you have enjoyed watching Rivals this year, it is simply nothing compared to how much I have loved it.

The series has felt like a long time coming – and I’m not talking about the 36 years that have passed since I first read the book! – but to explain why Rivals is so joyful to me right now means I have to talk about a few non-joyful things first, for context. Feel free to skip this next three paragraphs if all you want to read about is the TV series.

Mum died in September 2023, and it is from her I inherited the bookworm gene. She loved reading and she loved puns, and if there’s one thing mum and Jilly Cooper have in common it is that they would never ever knowingly miss an opportunity to make any pun, no matter how groan-worthy, at any time. The eulogy I wrote for her was stuffed with them.
Then Dad died in November 2023, and it is from him I got my love of comedy and TV, and films. Dad thought there was nothing on earth that couldn’t be improved by a decent knob gag, and indeed the eulogy I wrote for him contained a quote from his beloved Billy Connolly, and a joke about porn films. I like to think Jilly would have approved of both speeches.

So, 2024 for me, has been all about grief. And, whilst to an extent I was prepared to grieve for my parents, the thing I genuinely wasn’t prepared to be grieving for was my sense of self. I had no idea it would disappear so completely with the loss of my parents. I’ve been stifled by grief. Muzzled by it. Whenever, on those hundreds of occasions I’ve sat down to write, the words simply weren’t there. Or they were, but they were the wrong words, and they simply refused to flow out from my fingers (my brain, lets face it, is very rarely involved in the process) in the way that they used to. I’ve been blocked. Massively. Or rather, I’ve been drained.  of words, of colour, of techniques to cope. The world, without my being able to use my words to express it in the ways I used to, has been grey and drab, and incomplete. No reading either, well, nothing new anyway. Re-reading old favourites has been keeping me together.

Now, I’m not saying watching Rivals has made my world complete. It hasn’t. But it has … unlocked … something I’ve spent the past year thinking was unreachable: glee. The first two paragraphs of this article were the first things I’ve written in over a year that haven’t made me cry with frustration and sadness and loss, and for it to be a TV programme that inspired it? Well, it feels both a bit silly and bit like … coming home. But then again, I’m a silly person, so I guess it’s only fitting. I’m just glad that sitting in front of the computer with only my keyboard for company and my fingers guiding the way is no longer torture. For that reason, nonsensical and unimportant the subject matter of this post may be, it may also be one of the most important pieces I’ve ever written.  Now I’ve got all that off my chest, I shall get back on topic.

Welcome back misery skippers! The TV show then. Boy am I glad they waited till now, and waited until they got a team together who totally “get” what they are doing. The love the production team have for the material just shines in every moment. It’s a gloriously riotous, wickedly funny production that takes itself just seriously enough for it to work, but isn’t so serious that Jilly’s voice has been totally drowned in an effort to bring things up to date. More than once while watching I was caught by the thought thought that if you tried to do Dickens in the style of a Carry On film (before you scoff, I’m just going to say this: Muppet Christmas Carol shouldn’t work either, so there), this version of Rivals is where you’d end up, and I LOVE it. It’s all jolly tits, willies and bums on top of some serious social commentary and it’s all the better for it.

Have they got everything right? No, I suspect not, but genuinely, I was so busy enjoying watching it that I don’t actually care. Yes, they’ve changed some things – and quite a few of them for the better, things like the character of Charles Fairburn who now has a more prominent (and heartbreaking) backstory. Actually, can a backstory be prominent? Meh, you know what I mean. And Daysee Butler’s assault, treated as a minor footnote in the book, is now shown to be as horrific as it should have been written originally. Also, making Cameron Cook a woman of colour adds more layers to her story, and I’m all for it. I’m glad they dropped the Merry Widow subplot – at least for the first series – it was annoying in the book.

There’s been a lot of online chatter about the casting, and I freely admit that I was not immune. I was initially apprehensive about the casting for both Rupert Campbell Black and Tony Baddingham, and whilst some of those doubts have been vanquished mightily, a couple remain. Alex Hassell is (and I mean this with love) kinda funny lookin’. I didn’t care that he wasn’t blonde or Greek god-like within about 30 seconds of the first episode, but objectively speaking, he looks like a slightly smushed Tim Curry. But realistically, that just adds to his charm, he’s also got the arrogance, the swagger and the attitude of Rupert down perfectly. And frankly, if he ever wants to get dressed up Dr Frank-N-Furter, I’ll be first in line to buy tickets. Ironically, he looks almost perfectly how I imagined Bas Baddingham when I read the book, which was a bit confusing for a moment or two.

 

 

David Tennant as Tony Baddingham still gives me slight pause. Don’t get me wrong, he’s literally note-perfect in character, making you sympathise with him when his heart breaks over Cameron’s betrayal, even when you’re hating him, but physically, for me, he’s too slight. I’d always imagined him slightly more thuggish-looking, but in a well-tailored kind of way. But, frankly, that’s my issue not his, and it doesn’t actually matter a bit. He’s literally brilliant in the role. No other notes, sheer perfection.

 

The O’Haras. Look, they just had to give Aidan Turner (Declan) a big bushy moustache, didn’t they? Still would though, even though he’s a good ten years too young to play Declan really. He’s also too buff. Sorry, but he is. Look, I don’t make the rules, but they’ve only been and gone and broken them. Yes, yes, quite nicely as it happens, but still. Suffice to say, Aidan as Declan works. That ‘stache though?  Heinous. And tickly looking.  Yeah, really tickly. Very … tickly. Er, where, was I? Oh yes, Maud (Victoria Smurfitt) is perfectly cast, as is Catriona Chandler as Caitlin, though neither get enough screentime. Bella Maclean as Taggie has a bit of a thankless task portraying our romantic heroine, because without the benefit of Taggie’s inner monologue from the book, she can appear a bit wet, but Bella does play her incredibly well. I don’t even mind that she doesn’t have Taggie’s “cloud” of black hair, the final scene with her and Rupert is fabulous.

Love Emily Atack as Sarah Stratton, plus Nafeesa Williams playing Cameron Cook is everything you wanted from her and more, but my god! Danny Draper as Freddy Jones is a revelation! I’d always imagined Valerie Jones (played by Lisa McGrillis) to be playing at being more genteel than portrayed here, but it works, she’s more than annoying enough as a tragi-comic foil to her husband. Fred-Fred though, particularly in his scenes with Lizzie Vereker (played perfectly by Katherine Parkinson) is both hilarious and heart-wrenching. Even though seasoned book-readers already know where they end up, you are still simply aching for them to get together, at all times. They’re both simply brilliant.

I was talking about Rivals with some of my Master’s (Degree) of Comedy pals and more than one of them wished they’d been on set, particularly for the party scenes. Me, after spending time working on a set earlier this year –and with a Rivals cast member, to boot! – as a script supervisor (and I’m planning to go to NFTS next year to get fully trained up), I was wishing I’d been in the production office, helping plan everything out! I kind of miss the wall of post-its I had when I was planning my master’s scripts and putting all those characters together for myself back then, and I missed when I was writing for pure fun. I have the feeling that the Rivals writing room would be a home from home, a holiday from my own brain as it were. Jilly’s brain, and the world of Rutshire seems such a wonderful place to spend time attempting to make sense, and breath fresh life into the book I love so much. I’d give my eyeteeth to spend even an hour with the writing and production team. Just writing this post has made me giddy with freedom, I hope it’s a sign of things to come.

In the meantime (and especially after that cliffhanger) there HAS to be a second series, my sanity depends upon it!

If Rivals the book has been my safe space this year, Rivals the TV series has provided me a happy space alongside, and I am deeply grateful. May the joy of Jilly Cooper forever be with you, too.

*the poem “First of May” that Rupert quotes to Cameron remains the only poem I can actually recite in full, but sadly, it doesn’t come (ha!) in handy that often.

**Allegedly, there was one for Riders, but let’s just pretend there wasn’t and leave it there. I mean, yes, I did watch it recently, and yes, that was four hours of my time I’ll never get back, so let’s leave it at that, mmkay? See also The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, but even I, famed for my tolerance of nonsense, couldn’t bring myself to rewatch that one.