It’s not every period British drama series that opens with a clear, close-up shot of a man’s bare bum, holding steady as he’s thrusting while having sex in a bathroom.
Perhaps that’s why everybody is talking about Rivals.
Adapted from Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel of the same name, Hulu’s Rivals is, on the surface, about, well, rivalries. The primary duel of the minds is between Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) who runs a UK TV franchise called Corinium, and Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), a member of parliament and the government’s sports minister. There are plenty of other people going at it, including TV host Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) and his vivacious American producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), who constantly spar over how to make their talk show shine. And while that’s all very interesting—and Rivals makes it all so exciting—that’s not the real reason why you need to watch the show. You’ve got to check out Rivals because it’s easily the single horniest television show of 2024.
It’s genuinely surprising that the show exists on Disney+ internationally given how relentlessly horny it is. High School Musical this is not. Almost everyone here is varying shades of awful—brash, cruel, and utterly dismissive of anyone in a lower class (and since everyone here is ultra-rich, that’s pretty much everybody). But Rivals makes watching these nasty people (Baddingham has ‘bad’ in his name for a reason) an exhilarating highwire act. It’s such fun to watch them trade barbarous insults, and even more intriguing to watch them try to get laid.
Sex is constantly happening on Rivals. Episode 1 opens with a sex scene in an airplane bathroom and ends with a massive montage of countless couples going at it frivolously. That’s saying nothing of the number of other sex scenes, including a frisky game of naked tennis. Impressively, though the show highlights the 1980s, a sexually repressive time (particularly in the UK) for anyone not heterosexual, Rivals devotes a welcome amount of time to gay sex too. When it comes to sex in Rivals, it’s a case of nobody left behind.
It wouldn’t be surprising if all this sex was a clever way of luring audiences in and then dramatically reducing the number of sexual interactions throughout the season’s eight episodes, but that’s not the case. If anything, Episode 1 of Rivals establishes that the sex-filled premiere is a mere amuse-bouche of the sexual cacophony that’s to come.
Lust and desire is in the show‘s veins. When characters aren’t having sex, they’re talking about it. And on the odd occasion they aren’t discussing it, they’re thinking about it. From rather innocent bouts of would you rather and assessing various suitors’ fuckability to more emotional conversations about sexual desire, this might be the single horniest cast of characters in a television show. It’s not abnormal to have one or two sex-driven characters spicing up a show, but everyone in Rivals is, as the kids say, down bad.
You never know who’s going to be fornicating with who in Rivals. While that might sound like lazy writing, it’s actually one of the show’s strengths. Rivals follows some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain, and such standing comes with the feeling of being untouchable. It’s that otherworldly confidence that gives these characters carte-blanche to do whatever they want without that itchy feeling of consequence. Nothing can stop these lords, politicians, and societal elites from obtaining anything they desire, and that’s a mentality that bleeds into their rampant, unpredictable sex lives.
Though sex fuels Rivals, there’s plenty of intrigue outside of the sex scenes—though admittedly a lot of that drama is related to sex. Case in point, Rupert Campell-Black’s passionate desire for the much younger Taggie (Bella Maclean). An older man being romantically invested in a younger woman is hardly new, but Rivals twists the familiar by having Taggie’s mother Maud O’Hara (Victoria Smurfit) lust after Rupert while he tries to romance her daughter. And Maud is very much married in a monogamous relationship. It’s a steamy, complicated web that gets more enticing and complicated with each episode.
In one scene, a man has sex with four different women at once. In most shows, such a scene would be quite the scandal, but in something as relentlessly sex-driven as Rivals, it’s just another exciting moment. It’s that casual approach to sexual freedom and hedonism that makes the show so irresistibly watchable. You truly never know what’s coming next—or who’s coming next.
