On its surface, Hulu’s new eight-part series “Rivals” is a salacious “bonkbuster” about the feud between two exorbitantly privileged (and horny) British men living in the exclusive British Cotswolds in the 1980s. Set among rolling green hills and wildflower-filled forests that are part of large country estates, it is, as one character quips in the show’s opening minutes, the “prettiest prison I ever saw.” While “prison” is probably too strong of a word to describe the privileged lives of England’s posh upper crust, it does capture the lack of agency the women in this world feel.
The story, an adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s bestselling 1988 novel of the same name, sets itself up to tell the story of Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), who is fighting to renew the contract for his commercial U.K. television network, Corinium, and getting periodically sidetracked by his hatred for former Olympic showjumping champion turned Tory Cabinet minister of sport and womanizing rake Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell).
However, it’s really a show about how women struggle to find power within this world of powerful men. And sex. The show has so much sex that it makes “Bridgerton” seem practically puritanical.
It claims its “bonkbuster” title in its opening seconds as the frame fills with a woman grabbing a man’s bare butt before her hands (and the camera) slide up his back to reveal the always charismatic and tragically handsome Rupert shagging a gossip.
