A hit – but please don’t pretend it's feminist: Disney+'s Rivals reviewed

For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It therefore came as a bit of shock when I finally tried her novels for myself and found what they contained. There is, for example, no mistaking Jilly’s scorn for women who are fat and/or hairy, her belief that all female unhappiness can be cured by a damn good rogering, and the idea that not only is it fair enough for middle-aged blokes to lech after teenage girls, but that teenage girls rather like it when they do. (I was also slightly disconcerted by her favourite word for female genitalia – which, by way of a big clue, is the surname of the 41st and 43rd US presidents.)

What the show seems to know most of all is how much we secretly dislike our current pieties

So how on earth would Rivals go about adapting her work in 2024? The unexpected answer, judging from the two episodes I’ve seen so far, is pretty wholeheartedly. Now and again, you can detect a knowing glint in the show’s eye about the couldn’t-happen-now antics of the 1980s – but what that glint seems to know most of all is how much we secretly dislike our current pieties.

So it was that the first episode began with a kind of defiant overture. In an aeroplane toilet (Concorde naturally), vigorous sexual congress was under way, featuring the toned, thrusting bottom of Jilly’s long-standing cad Rupert Campbell-Black, a red stiletto shoe pushed hard against a wall and a climax duly accompanied by the popping of an onboard champagne bottle. Emerging afterwards, Rupert (Alex Hassell) walked down the aisle in slow motion while glossy women peered over glossy magazines, objectifying away.

And with that, it was time to introduce the show’s eponymous rivalry.