Rivals’ Rutshire – a place where modern Britain’s brutal divisions disappear in a cloud of sex |
For Jilly Cooper devotees – a motley band that unites me with Queen Camilla and Joanna Lumley, Ian Rankin and ex-footballer Tony Adams – it has been the best of times, and the worst of times. (No apologies for the clunky Tale of Two Cities misquote. Jilly was fond of gleefully shoehorning in the odd bit of Dickens, or Shakespeare, or Wordsworth.) The best of times, because the television adaptation of Rivals has shown the world what some of us knew all along, which is that Cooper’s stories are life-affirming and wise and hysterically funny; but the worst of times, when Cooper’s unexpected death last year cut short the late-life renaissance in which she was quite rightly revelling.
The first half of a blissful second season of Rivals comes to a climax this week (puns always intended). Six heavenly hours on the sofa, following the professional rivalries and personal dramas of a hard-drinking bunch of 1980s telly executives as they bomb along Cotswold lanes blowing Silk Cut smoke through the open windows of their Austin Metros, or pogo to Nena’s 99 Red Balloons on sticky pub carpet while knocking back tequila shots. Rivals has reminded us that good television can be........