TV review: Rivals' second season is like a tripe panto with sexy shower scenes — and I love it
Victoria Smurfit in Rivals with Aidan Turner.
is back on Disney+ for a second season and it’s as good as ever.
It’s basically a pantomime with sexy shower scenes. The star turn is still the unimprovably named Lord Tony Baddingham, with David Tennant hamming it up as the villain.
It turns out he didn’t die when his former employee and lover, Cameron Cook, hit him with an award gong. She ran away with Baddingham’s arch rival, Rupert Campbell-Black and they had soft porn sex in a cottage.
Lord Tony tracked her down and brought her back for reasons I couldn’t really figure out. But that’s not the point. is supposed to be about the a commercial ding-dong between Baddingham and Campbell-Black, and their rival TV stations. And Cinderella is supposed to be about a girl who never gets to go to the ball. But the plot never really matters in the pantomime – it’s all about the vibe. And the vibe here is still bawdy foolishness.
This is the break we need from modern TV, which is mainly a White Lotus rip-off or a woman murdered in the woods. That said, I still think Aidan Turner is miscast as a fictional Terry Wogan. His voice is too high when he gets excited, and this is where everyone is excited all the time, and in more ways than one.
Five minutes in and we have double full-frontal male nudity, when two identical twins go skinny dipping in Danny Dyer’s house. Or rather his character, Freddie Jones’ house, a mansion that he shares with social-climber Valerie, his wife. She’s proper brilliant at being awful, in full panto mode. Freddie is the emotional core, we want him to get with that nice Valerie, who writes bonkbusters.
Ella Maclean is back as Taggie O’Hara. She’s still hot for Campbell-Black after their snog in season one, even though he should have ‘Bad Un’ dyed into his improbable quiff. We’re on her side because she’s got a good heart and often looks on the verge of tears. But this is , where good people make terrible decisions, so she’s in line for some pain. You can see why the Brits love . It’s got rich people being smutty in country homes. There is even a slow-mo session during a polo match that looks like a tribute to The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Some good jokes too. One of the characters introduces herself as ‘Muffy, short for Caroline.’ A couple of minutes later the writers throw in a double entendre about Muffy that made me laugh out loud. This is disposal tripe really. And I love it.
