📺 Watched Rivals.
This is an adaption of Jilly Cooper’s book of the same name. Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is likely a fan. It’s set in the 1980s with plenty of occasion to enjoy reminiscing about the fashion and music if you experienced it first hand. And lots of “rumpy pumpy”, as it seems entirely appropriate to describe it as in such an innuendo laden show.
Witness a bunch of very rich and even richer English folk generally get up to no good. Rupert Campbell-Black is a perfect name for such a character, and there he is, clearly supposed to be the world’s most handsome man (a relatively young Conservative politician whenever he’s not messing about - perhaps more plausible in the 1980s? I don’t know). David Tennant (aka Doctor Who) is also in the mix, as Lord Baddingham.
Basically almost everyone in the show is awful. Constant cheating on their partners, making offensive comments, winding up their neighbours, committing business-related subterfuge all that good stuff. I super-cringed at the storyline where the afore-mentioned Campbell-Black seemed like he was heading for a relationship with someone who appeared to be portraying a teenager and definitely way too young for him. But hey, 1980s Conservative MPs gotta Conservative MP.
Pure fun/rich people being naughty nonsense, although very occasionally it hits on a serious topic, prejudice and abuse amongst those. But mostly its over-the-top silly fun if you like seeing rich people behave terribly. One of the rare things that Rishi Sunak, big fan of the books, is unambiguously correct about is that you need to have escapism in your life. Particularly during times when he and his colleagues are in charge.
It’s apparently led to a massive revival of interest in 1980s fashion. Which you too can follow along with using the #80soutfits on Tiktok apparently, if you really want to.
