Rivals: the Jilly Cooper 'bonkbuster' TV hit that everyone's talking about

A TV series boasting champagne guzzling, "gigantic 80s hair" and "rumpy pumpy" is heading your way – it could only be a Jilly Cooper adaptation.

Disney+ has given the legendary novelist's 1988 "bonkbuster" book "Rivals" a modern makeover and it's already grabbing the attention of critics.

'Vamped up'

The second book in Cooper's "Rutshire Chronicles" series about the upper-class world, "Rivals" is "set in the not-so-glamorous halls" of television production, said Yahoo Entertainment. It "follows the rivalry between two high-flying people in power": politician Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and TV exec Declan O'Hara (Aidan Turner).

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The "first rumpy pumpy" begins just nine seconds into the first episode, said Carol Midgley in The Times. "It is one of the most kitsch, vivacious, knowingly corny openings that I have seen in quite some time", but the show is a "riot".

It is "all so vivid" that "you can almost smell the fag smoke and hairspray, wet dogs and sex", said Jane Fryer for the Daily Mail. Everything "Jilly" feels "vamped up", including the "huge, sprawling honey-stoned Cotswolds mansion with croquet lawns" and "herbaceous borders to die for", with "endless boozing on champagne" and "gigantic 80s hair".

'More than just a romp'

This "tumescent adaptation" is stuffed with "pneumatic talent", said London's The Standard, from David Tennant and Emily Atack to Rufus Jones and Danny Dyer. Its "human heart" is Katherine Parkinson. 

In the 1980s, Cooper was "considered raunchy" but the sex in her books was "primarily silly, absurd", something the lead writer Dominic Treadwell-Collins and director Elliott Hegarty clearly understand.

Perhaps, suggested Cooper in a BBC interview, part of the appeal is the decade itself. "The 80s really were the most fun time," she said: "masses of sex, masses of drinking, masses of parties", so "the younger generation all wish they had been born then".

The show certainly is "more than just a romp", said Anita Singh for The Telegraph, giving it a five-star review. Yes, "everyone commits adultery and smokes like a chimney". They also "hunt and shoot" and "tell off-colour jokes" but, just "like the author herself, it has bags of heart".