“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” declares fairy servant Puck in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Or, as Taggie so eloquently puts it in the newest season of Hulu’s “Rivals,” “Why are men so bloody useless?”
The second season of the British “bonkbuster” premiered Friday, picking up shortly after the first season ended. Two Cotswolds-based broadcasting companies, Corinium and Ventura, are competing to see who will win a commercial contract. As they face off in this franchise war, the resounding theme continues to be that the men are both “useless” and “fools.” The real question is how much patience the women in their lives will have for them.
On the Ventura side, sweet, innocent Taggie (Bella MacLean) is gutted after the rakish Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) disappears just moments after finally kissing her in the kitchen. It turns out that the Tory Cabinet minister of sport who is 20 years older has absconded to a cottage in Devon. He is protecting (read: shagging) fierce producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), who is on the run after she bashed in the head of Coronium’s nefarious Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant).
While the two are holed up having sex, Campbell-Black’s partners have been left to keep the company running and navigate their own trials and trysts. Hunky Irish broadcaster Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) is on the outs with his whimsical wife, Maud (Victoria Smurfit), who is done living in his shadow and has returned to London to act on stage. Married businessman Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer) is sticking it out with his vapid wife, Valerie (Lisa McGrillis), even though he is completely besotted with romance writer Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson), who is married to egotistical and clueless Coronium TV host James (Oliver Chris).
At Coronium, Baddingham has survived the bloody brawl in his office and is now seeking revenge via methods that his practical wife Monica (Claire Rushbrook) reasonably finds distasteful and short-sighted. He’s also dealing with the slight inconvenience of having impregnated his network’s married host, Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack). But for Baddingham, these setbacks are minor, and he navigates them ruthlessly while smoking cigars and shagging, or trying to shag, other women.
As the amorous adults vie for the all-important contract and each other’s attention, it becomes clear that the viewer is like Puck, watching lovers fall in and out of love with the wrong person amid the lush backdrop of the countryside. Personally, I love this bird’s-eye view and find the second season of “Rivals” just as much fun to watch as the first.
From which company is going to cover the big polo match to how a preelection dinner party is going to go when people spend more time in the pantry than at the table to who will win the 1987 election, each episode is a frothy escape. The show continues to be delightfully grounded in the lived realities of the ’80s while being infused with the same wry social commentary as its source material, Jilly Cooper’s “Rutshire Chronicles” series. This unique combination is ultimately what sets “Rivals” apart.
As in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the lust-filled adults and their foibles are representative of larger themes about society and love. This makes the play a fitting part of this season’s plot, but I’m not going to spoil how the Bard makes his way into this season of the show.
Instead, I’ll return the focus to Taggie, the moral center of this very immoral world. While watching the play, she asks a friend what it is about. Her friend sums it up perfectly, telling Taggie that it’s “about the fragility of being in love. How easy it can happen with the wrong person, but how that same haphazardness makes the triumph of true love all the sweeter.”
“Rivals” is nothing if not an updated exploration of this timeless theme. It’s obvious that love in this corner of the British countryside will never “run smooth.” There are far too many rendezvous in pools and pantries for that. Instead, what’s really being questioned is if any of this love can be “true” when the men are caught up in their ruthless games and the women are tired of being the casualties in their war.
The show’s only fault is that to answer these questions, viewers will have to suffer through a haphazard release schedule. While the first three episodes of this 12-episode season dropped on Friday, the next three will be released weekly. Then, at some unannounced time later this year, the final six episodes will air. This release schedule feels like the worst of all the streaming worlds: mixing weekly episodes with two-part seasons.
However, while inconvenient, it’s not enough of a deterrent to stop watching, because “Rivals” is easily one of the freshest, funniest and frothiest shows, and I can’t wait to watch how these “useless” fools continue to lust after each other in the name of love.
The first three episodes of “Rivals” are streaming on Hulu. The rest of Part 1 of the season will roll out weekly.
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