‘Rivals’ is surprisingly progressive – and a harbinger of the MeToo motion

Warning: Rivals spoilers forward.

Welcome to ‘Showtime with Emily Maddick’, during which GLAMOUR’S Assistant Editor and Leisure Director brings a singular perspective to the month’s most hyped movie or TV present. For October’s instalment, Emily dissects the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 1988 so-called ‘bonkbuster’, Rivals. Whereas there had been some concern that recreating Cooper’s notoriously sexist world could possibly be problematic in 2024, Emily argues that this fabulously-executed TV present isn’t solely surprisingly progressive, but in addition a harbinger of #MeToo – exposing poisonous office requirements thirty years earlier than the worldwide motion that held so many males to account.

I like Jilly Cooper. I’ve at all times beloved Jilly Cooper, and I actually love the brand new Disney+ adaptation of her 1988 ‘bonkbuster’ Rivals. It’s a debauched, extreme and escapist breath of recent air in these dismal occasions; a televisual gorge of glamour, greed – and, sure… gratuitous, unbridled bonking. It’s additionally, extra critically, consultant of a time practically forty years in the past when sexism, homophobia and racism was rife. A time when males, particularly within the fictionalised Cooper Cotswolds confection of Rutshire, usually handled girls as little greater than items of meat – right here’s taking a look at you Mr Campbell-Black. (Reader, please notice, that is not why I like Jilly Cooper, so do bear with me.)

Sanne Gault/Disney+

Because it was introduced that Disney+ could be recreating the goings-on on the fictional TV community Corinium, full with a stellar forged together with David Tennant, Aidan Turner and Emily Atack, there was discuss how problematic Cooper’s books may appear at the moment. Many thought that recreating the Nineteen Eighties Cooperverse in 2024 could possibly be seen as regressive and tone deaf – after practically forty years of progress. Which, if dealt with incorrectly, it may very effectively have been.

Fortunately, this isn’t the case. Actually, in some ways, Rivals faucets into the zeitgeist of proper now. It is straight from the playbook of the current smash hits which might be Saltburn and The White Lotus (even all the way down to an analogous theme tune and opening credit) with its pitch-perfect skewering of the British class system and the filthy wealthy (filthy being the operative phrase right here.) Its plot – specializing in the behind-the-scenes machinations of a TV station – attracts comparisons to Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston’s good The Morning Present and even the colossus of all current tv sequence that’s Succession.

However Rivals is camp, self-aware and blisteringly witty – and has a banging ‘80s soundtrack in addition. By no means thoughts the blue eyeshadow, perms and shoulder pads galore.