Rivals, the TV show

Well it’s all anyone’s talking about, isn’t it? Or is it perhaps all Gen X is talking about?

For those of my generation, Jilly Cooper’s series about toffs bonking in Rutshire (and I appreciate that sentence may not mean anything to a large part of the world/different age group) was a seminal part of our teenage years.

I loved Cooper’s books so much I was initially reluctant to watch the new TV adaptation of Rivals because I was certain it would be badly scripted and completely ruined. I preferred to stay in my paperback bubble – were you team Rupert or Declan? Taggie or Cameron? Then Taggie, now very much Cameron for standing up to the awfulness of these entitled men.

But that is to watch with hindsight rather than nostalgia. And I don’t mean nostalgia for the misogyny; I remember begging the bank for an overdraft to see me through to payday and being loftily told to ask my boyfriend to help me out. No, despite the jok…