If you’ve got both an Internet connection and a TV, chances are you’ve at least heard of Disney+’s new series Rivals.
The show, adapted from Dame Jilly Coopers’ 1988 novel of the same name, features “high fences and low morals,” the book’s author says.
Starring David Tennant and Aidan Turner alongside Katherine Parkinson, Danny Dyer, Emily Atack, Claire Rushbrook and more, the show is an ’80s bonanza of crimped hair, vol-au-vents, broadcast TV, and indoor smoking.
It’s also brimming with sex, staying true to the original books (Rivals is part of a series).
Dame Jilly Cooper was an executive producer on the show, which was shot over six months in 2023.
Speaking to the BBC, though, the author said: “How much of a say did I have? Not much.”
Her grandson Jago was on the production team of the show. So, Dame Jilly said that whenever she rocked up on set, she was generally known as “Jago’s granny.”
Despite, in her words, not having much of a say in how the show was going, the writer and executive producer said some changes caused her to intervene.
More specifically, Dame Jilly seemed to want her characters to wait a little longer before sleeping with each other on set.
“I did occasionally say, ‘No, I don’t think they should be jumping on each other quite so early in the story’ and things like that,” she told the BBC.
We don’t know whether or not the TV’s crew followed her advice (though we’re struggling to imagine how much sooner the, er, action could have started if they had).
Still, she seems to have approved of some changes, like an early mile-high scene that happens on board Concorde.
“It’s fun. It’s quite naughty too,” she said of the addition.
“There is a lot of sex. In one episode they have every member of the cast coupled and fornicating for the next 20 minutes and all of that,” she added, describing the ’80s as “masses of sex, masses of drinking, masses of parties. The younger generation all wish they had been born then.”
However, her own 80s are proving a little different ― “Well, 87 is very old and you do forget about sex,” she told the BBC.
“I’m amazed at some of the things I wrote about [in the books]. They are quite strong.”
Rivals is available to watch on Disney+.