Rivals season 2 is a filthy marmalade dropper – I can’t get enough

The first season of Rivals was a hedonistic phenomenon, packed with 80s nostalgia, strange prawn canapés, oodles of taffeta, and endless bonking.

How good it feels to be back for season 2.

Mercifully, little has changed. Minutes into the first episode, we’re poolside at a party celebrating the new TV production company Venturer, when the camera zooms in gratuitously on a pair of quivering budgie smugglers.

Moments later, the twins wearing the barely-there swimwear decie to forgo their clothing altogether to jump in, in the buff. There’s a long, lingering shot, lest we miss any of it.

In news that will come as no surprise, many more marmalade-dropper sex scenes follow, including one in front of rapt dogs that’s very Dame Jilly Cooper-coded.

The most quintessentially Rivals raunchy rendezvous unfolds between married couple Maud O’Hara (Victoria Smurfit) and Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), while they’re lavishing one another under the pelting jets of a showerhead. Out of nowhere, a finger trails down a back, venturing into a lesser-explored territory. I cackled. So will you.

These 12 new episodes – the first three of which I was granted early access to for this review – comprise the second half of Dame Jilly’s Rivals novel, part of the legendarily filthy Rutshire Chronicles.

If this season is as much of a smash as the first, there’s no doubt that the next books in the sequence will be drawn upon too.

In season two Corinium and Venturer are still embattled over the regional TV franchise. It’s mostly a MacGuffin to tee up the arch rivalry between Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and the miraculously still living Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant).

Each of the first three episodes cohere around a big Rutshire event; in the first, there is polo, the second a dinner party (by far and away the capstone) and the third an election – timely!

We return to the thick of that three-pronged romantic entanglement between Rupert, Taggie (Bella Maclean) and Cameron (Nafessa Williams). It’s been shrouded in Disney-decreed confidentiality, so you’ll have to wait until Friday to see who he’s picked.

On a more serious note, Emily Atack delivers a poignant performance as Sarah Stratton, pushed into a misogynistic corner by an unexpected pregnancy.

The horror rapist Reverend Penney (David Calder) returns as a reminder of one of the most horrifying moments from the first series.

Plus, Rupert is volleying from one personal blight to the next, unable to avoid the strain of the reckless decisions he’s made in the past.

Whether such storylines carry too much emotional weight for Rivals’ flimsy footing will be decided by how they’re resolved later in the season.

The superb cast seems delighted to be back. In a stack with names like Tennant and Turner, Katherine Parkinson and Danny Dyer’s turns as Lizzie and Freddy remain the highlight, with thus far not enough screentime for my liking. Oliver Chris’s James Vereker takes the cake for comedic value.

The newbies are mighty: Hayley Atwell and Rupert Everett play Rupert’s ex-wife and his former trainer/her new lover.

Lord and Lady Baddingham (Claire Rushbrook) go toe-to-toe and forge a scheming partnership, which is far more thrilling for Rushbrook than her character being forever stranded solo on the manor sofa.

The House of Mouse coin has been well spent. Rivals looks and feels fabulously retro. The soundtrack touts the earworms of Sade, David Bowie and Shocking Blue. The wardrobe, buffeted hair and certain set designs look purposefully tacky.

Rivals has somehow bucked the TV trend in recent years towards fewer sex scenes and ‘eat the rich’ antics. These toffs can’t get enough of each other. Nor us them.

Rivals season 2 launches today on Disney Plus.

This review was originally published on May 11.

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