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 jokes, the script doesn’t shy away from that. Nor the casual homophobia. Nor the casual classism and sexual violence of the era. In fact, that’s the shocking yet riveting part – being reminded that it was all so casual and throwaway and, somehow, accepted as part of life.

But it’s also about watching for the jokes (Jilly writes great one-liners), the cartoon villains (Tony Baddingham, anyone?) and the romance. This piece should be (as it’s why we are here), an assessment of the interiors – but I fear next to shoulder pads like those of Valerie Jones, no décor could ever compete.

That said, for fans of the decade there are peach bathrooms, shagpile carpets, shags (I mean swags) and pelmets galore (and I’m not talking about the length of the skirts).

The exteriors of the houses are divine, the interiors – in that effortlessly upper class way where a priceless Hermès blanket is draped over a piano (more comfortable for bonking on later) – are, with the exception of the Jones’s, shabbily charming. Indeed, are Fred Jones and his wife Valerie (Danny Dyer on fine form and Lisa McGrillis) the first neighbour Joneses that no-one wants to keep up with?

It's a riot, it’s fun, it’s also dark in places and I will definitely be watching to the end.

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