‘Rivals’ review: Media moguls and desperate housewives bonk through the English countryside

In the 1980s, when author Jilly Cooper and her family moved a couple hours outside of London to the upscale rural enclave known as the Cotswolds, she soon learned the local pastime was sex. And lots of it: “Everywhere I looked people seemed to be committing both adultery and fornication.” Those neighbors would become the inspiration for her novel “Rivals” and its juicy story of desperate housewives, philandering husbands and the ruthless world of independent television in 1986.

The book is happily sordid, with the soul of a trashy nighttime soap, and it has been adapted for TV with that same frothy spirit for Hulu starring David Tennant as the wealthy, cigar-chomping media executive whose TV empire ties it all together.

There are rivalries as far as the eye can see in the fictional Rutshire County, populated with egomaniacal scoundrels and the women who seek pointless validation from them. The show doesn’t even bother with the idea that any of these people are involved parents, are you kidding? How boring that would be! Transactional relationships abound, along with shifting alliances, dirty tricks and lusty proclivities against a backdrop of new money and old. Occasionally, an authentic connection blooms amidst the rolling green pastures and stately homes.

Tennant plays Lord Tony Baddingham, the tyrannical head of a television network whose besuited, eel-like confidence belies all kinds of unexamined insecurities. Worried the company is losing its footing, he’s lured over a restless and rebellious-minded BBC journalist, an Irishman named Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) and we’re introduced to the world of Rutshire through the eyes of this newcomer as well as that of his unfulfilled wife (Victoria Smurfit) and eldest child.

At work, Declan’s producer is an intriguingly savvy American (Nafessa Williams), who is also secretly having an affair with Baddingham. At home, Declan has to fend off a charming Olympic equestrian-turned-Tory politician (Alex Hassell), who comes from a long line of notable somebodies. He’s also a womanizer who has eyes for Declan’s 20-year-old daughter. There will be age-gap discourse around this storyline, and with good reason. He’s an unrepentant middle-aged cad who maybe believes he can change for her, and she’s too naive and inexperienced to know any better. She’s meant to be lovely and innocent and virginal, but she’s Little Red Riding Hood to his wolf, which isn’t fun and frisky so much as pathetic, and it isn’t helped by Bella Maclean’s performance, which consists of widening her eyes in shock and then widening them some more.

And yet, there’s enough going on in “Rivals” that these portions don’t really detract from the zippiness of the whole. Created by Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the series feels like an unholy mix of three titles. The first is “The Nest,” an underseen 2020 film starring Carrie Coon and Jude Law as married strivers whose unstable marriage unravels even further when the family moves to the Cotswolds. It is also set in 1986. The second is the Australian series “The Newsreader,” starring Anna Torv and Sam Reid, about the lives of TV reporters in Melbourne, set in 1986 as well. (What is it about 1986 that has captured the imagination?) The series was only legal to stream in the U.S. for about half a second last month, which is too bad because it’s terrific and funny and if you come across it, I heartily recommend it.

The third inspiration is more recent but also better known: “Desperate Housewives.”

Maybe throw in a dash of “Dynasty” while you’re at it, because “Rivals” is yet more wealth-aganda, but it refuses to take itself too seriously and is all the better for it. Visually, it’s a terrific blend of classy and tacky. (The O’Hara family car is a beat up minivan in a sad mustard yellow; it’s perfect.) Every character is underwritten — the ensemble functions as a collection of desires to be suppressed or acted upon — but in certain roles, the cast is good enough (especially Tennant, Williams and Hassell) to make something out of nothing. The heartfelt moments hit, but so does the humor, whether it’s Baddingham’s self-congratulatory speech after winning an award for a tawdry TV drama, or Declan devising the opening of his new chat show, spinning his chair around to meet the camera: “Good evening.” It’s ridiculous and thoroughly bang on.

The dialogue can be wonderfully absurd, too. Outside Baddingham’s palatial estate, a group of toffs waits for a morning hunt to begin and one member of the party is appalled by the delay: “Before the syphilis reached his brain, my father used to host seven shoots a year and we never started the first drive later than half past nine!”

Cooper wrote about the show’s source material recently in a piece for British Vogue and rereading it again all these years later, she was “both amazed and shocked by how things have changed in the past nearly four decades.” With some nostalgia, she notes: “Today there seems to be far less bonking.”

She could have just as easily been referring to the general lack of sex on screen as of late, and here comes “Rivals” to buck the trend with a tone that’s shamelessly horny rather than erotic, which is clear from the naked rear end that opens the series. A man is coupling enthusiastically in the Concord loo, mid-flight, his partner’s red stiletto braced against the wall for leverage while Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” plays on the soundtrack. The same episode closes with Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” over a montage of characters ending their day with yet more bonking, as Cooper would say. That’s as literal as needle drops get, but I had to laugh and it gives you an idea of the show’s winking personality.

But also, there is assault and coercion as well, which are kept brief, but the point is made, and at least the show acknowledges that rampant consensual affairs aside, let’s not pretend nastier realities don’t exist as well. Or that ugly retrograde attitudes used to be uttered as casually as “hello.” The show keeps the latter to a minimum, likely because producers are betting most viewers don’t want to watch a show that more fully and accurately depicts bigotries the upper classes express in private, and I think they’re right. But there’s no question “Rivals” is soft-pedaling it in that regard.

The eight-episode season ends on a cliffhanger and I tend to think that’s a mistake for streaming, where shows are either canceled after one season or they see year-plus gaps between seasons. If “Rivals” were guaranteed to return after a short hiatus — the way things used to work when shows like this were all over network TV — that would be different. But there are better ways to format a season so that it feels like a complete thought (which doesn’t preclude more thoughts or successive seasons). Still, I suspect “Rivals” has a good chance for renewal.

Somewhat touchingly, there’s a neglected housewife and romance novelist (Katherine Parkinson) who might be a stand-in for Cooper herself. She doesn’t buy into most of the madness around her, but uses it for inspiration instead. As Nora Ephron once said, everything is copy.

‘RIVALS’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: On Hulu