Rivals is the talk of the town, but is Disney's Jilly Cooper adaptation ...

Rivals, starring Alex Hassell, David Tenant, Nafessa Williams and Danny Dyer, is supposedly the sexiest bonkbuster Disney has ever seen

Robert Viglasky/Disney+

Hang on, this isn’t Rutshire! The Disney+ adaptation of Britain’s best bonkbuster, Rivals by Jilly Cooper, swaggered its way onto our screens today, positively tumescent with star power, bouffant 80s wigs and more high society sex than you can shake a riding crop at. But our first vision is not of the country manors and busty politicians’ wives that audiences might expect from Cooper’s fictional Cotswolds romp. No, we begin with a behind.

Rupert Campbell-Black – most handsome man in Britain, rider of horses and women – is ravishing the ghostwriter of his memoir in a concorde loo on his way to the States. ‘Addicted to Love’ is playing. The sound barrier breaks. Champagne corks pop. Welcome to Rivals. And while ‘the first not-quite-lady of Fleet Street’ Beattie Johnson is very audibly enjoying herself at the show’s grand opening – what are the critics making of the sexiest show on Disney?

One heluva noise, it turns out. While the subject matter may sound somewhat dry – the world of 80s independent television is hardly the juiciest of rump steak – Rivals is the talk of the town. The cast, in particular, are winning resounding adulation for going full gonzo as the sexed-up Cotswolds set. David Tenant, says the New Statesman, is ‘honestly never better’ television boss Lord Tony Baddingham (who, in a subtle case of nominative determinism, is not very nice). Slimy and smarmy, The Standard calls him ‘an etiolated preying mantis, stalking malevolently through the buttocky countryside.’