When season one of Rivals premiered in 2024, it was an instant hit. Critics dished out four and five-star reviews with the sort of jolly abandon champagne is scoffed with in the series. Countless columns, particularly in the British press, gushed over its “horniness, hedonism and hope”.They were wooed by the sex and the glamour that comes with British icon Dame Jilly Cooper and her “bonkbuster” series The Rutshire Chronicles. Finally, here was a proper grown-up series that knew how to have fun, a show that revelled in excess and celebrated sex, money and power.Bella Maclean as Taggie O’Hara and Alex Hassell as Rupert Campbell-Black in Rivals.Its driving storyline – the battle for a TV licence in the Cotswolds in the 1980s – sounded pretty dry, but its heroes and villains, led by playboy Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and golden-boy journalist Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) and the cigar-chomping Lord Tony Baddingham (a marvellous David Tennant), were a scream.The biggest surprise, though, was how teenagers and young women responded. It wasn’t – shockingly – the ins and outs of regional television that had them hooked, it was the will-they-won’t-they romance between Rupert, 36, and naive 20-year-old Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), the daughter of Rupert’s business partner Declan.In these two, Rivals had two of Cooper’s quintessential characters: the wealthy playboy who wears his red flags on his sleeves and the naive young heroine (in book publisher Penguin’s Jilly Cooper glossary, they are helpfully classified as a “full-on bastard” and “adorable”).“The fact that people really took to that sort of blossoming relationship, despite how it starts, I think, I was very grateful and relieved about that,” says Hassell. “There was a degree of surprise, I suppose, quite how much the young folk have got into it.”Alex Hassell as playboy MP Rupert Campbell-Black, whose most uncomplicated relationship is with his dogs in Rivals.Adds Maclean: “I think we’re most shocked about that. The teens who are really for Rupert and Taggie, the ones sort of rooting for the relationship the most, which was surprising and lovely and confronting.”It’s not exactly a healthy relationship to aspire to, so what’s the attraction for teenagers?“It’s really interesting, isn’t it?” says Hassell. “And we’ve talked a lot about trying to work out why. I guess it’s the idea that a young, you know, heart-on-sleeve-type woman can plant the seeds of change in this really messed up guy, and that she can inspire him to try and be better. I suppose it’s a fantasy.”Hassell and Maclean are sitting together in London and talking over Zoom ahead of season two, which has been upsized to 12 episodes. Their chemistry on screen ripples and they are playful together in person, talking over each other and checking in on answers.For Hassell, the series has been a huge boost to a career that has mainly featured short stints on shows such as The Boys and His Dark Materials. Rivals, meanwhile, has given him plenty to play with, not only in terms of character but also in, well, a lot of sex scenes. Rupert is – as they say in the sports department here – a pants man and a rat.“I think partly what you’re talking about here is the tennis court scene and the sex stuff?”Well, any of the scenes …“It’s all in the books, obviously,” he says. “And that [full-frontal nude tennis court scene in season one] is a really famous scene in the book. And it was communicated to me pretty early that they were keen for that to be represented in the right way.David Tennant as Rivals’ top villain Lord Tony Baddingham.“And I was alright about it. I mean, you know, of course I found the filming of it sort of OK. It was the thought of millions of people seeing it [he starts to laugh] … But the part is worth it. It’s such an interesting part.“And the more I play the part, the more of the story there is, the more complicated he is, actually, the more the acting exercise is really, really interesting, the challenge of it, and I’m willing to get my kit off to play a part like that.”At heart, of course, Rupert isn’t all bad. Cooper, who died last year, had always called him one of her favourite characters, with Rupert appearing in all 11 books in her Rutshire Chronicles series, metamorphosing from an Olympic polo-playing playboy to – well, I’m not going to spoil it here.Bella Maclean as wide-eyed innocent Taggie O’Hara in Rivals.In short, he’s a complicated man, so what does Hassell see in Rupert that makes him worth it?“He has different modes with different people,” says Hassell. “But also his heart. It takes quite a lot of work to get to it and to his vulnerability, but the massive awakening that Taggie is causing in him, I think, is really exciting to play. The distance between that little boy inside of him that is trying to get out, as it were, with this kind of armour, this alpha male, ’80s – can I say dick swinger? – is an interesting distance.”For Maclean, who starred in the Netflix hit Sex Education, making Taggie something more than “adorable” was a challenge. In the books, as in the show, Taggie – who has been aged up from 18 in the books – is somewhat of an outsider to all the shenanigans that go on in the fictional village of Cotchester. She is wide-eyed about Rupert’s world, but she is also the most down-to-earth person he knows.“Taggie, on the page, I feel like she doesn’t speak much and she observes the world,” says Maclean. “And so it was up to me to add in my own thoughts on what I felt was going on.“And that’s where I tried to make her feel like she has more of a backbone and she’s much tougher than she lets on. And the showrunners and the producers and the writers were really keen on that.“They don’t want it to be soppy. They want it to be realistic. Because although it’s in the ’80s, you’ve got everyone watching it now. It’s a different generation of people and young girls watching it who want to relate to it.Alex Hassell describes his character Rupert Campbell-Black as an ’80s alpha male who is struggling with his feelings.“But I think it was also important to make her soppy and vulnerable and insecure and innocent because it’s honest, it’s real, and we’re all like that. And I remember when I was 20, and you’re discovering so much and learning so much about yourself, but you also have your teenage years still confronting you.”Despite that vulnerability, Taggie is the one person in Rivals who can probably rescue Rupert from himself.“He needs other people,” says Hassell. “And I think he’s always wanted to be self-sufficient and his upbringing is such that he finds it difficult to trust people and open up to people. And actually a lot of people really try and be there for him in the second season and Taggie is certainly one of those people.”Maclean: “I do rescue you, though.”Hassell: “Rescue that little boy inside …”Maclean: “That’s banging on the door, screaming to get out, blood-curdling screams.”For all its silliness, Rivals does have quite a bit to say about power and who gets to hold it. The answer? Men. Usually at a cost to themselves and a greater cost to the women in their lives.Alex Hassell as Rupert Campbell-Black and Bella Maclean as Taggie O’Hara in Rivals.“It’s saying a lot about drive and ambition,” agrees Hassell. “And if you think that you can just drive to this different place, you will be happy, and it’s suggesting that if you don’t care about the collateral damage on the way to that destination, you will ruin your actual chances of happiness.“It’s suggesting that you should try and open up to being present and being with people around you, and how being a careful person is going to be much better for you and the world, than this sort of single-minded drive to succeed.”As for happy endings, Cooper was always a firm believer in them. Do Hassell and Maclean believe in happy endings?“The good thing about the show is that it is suggesting that there isn’t a happily ever after, that life and happiness and relationships of all kinds take work, and they are an art,” says Hassell. “Loving is an art, and is something that you have to work at and continue to try and be good at.”Adds Maclean: “This series has a lot more darkness to it, but there’s still so much humour in it. And I like that message, even in moments of sorrow and heartache, there’s somehow so much humour and joy. And that’s what I love about the show. It’s a good lesson on life.”Rivals is now streaming on Disney+.Want more TV? We’ve got you.Newsletter: Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. 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