13/39
Coincidentally, Aidan Turner has previously filmed at Chavenage House (The Priory in Rivals)
Scenario
It follows Rupert Campbell-Black and Tony Baddingham as they have a long-standing rivalry that comes to a head.
The same filming location was also used to portray Trenwith House in the 2015 BBC TV adaptation of Poldark
So I obviously read the book ages ago (it was like a coming-of-age ritual in a certain time and place) and to be honest, remembered very little of it apart from the odd name (because some Jilly-created ones were sooo de rigueur – Rupert Campbell Black says it all – and have somehow passed into the lexicon), but I almost immediately began to, if not remember the plot wholesale, then get a synaptic rush with the heady YSL Opium scent of watching The Rivals.
This adaptation (one episode in) seems to get it right
It has giggles rather than belly laughs and is cheeky, not salacious.
Maybe it’s because I’m older and have met more people that Cooper’s critique of British culture is more obvious, but I think it’s also the casting, the accents, the costumes, the bringing out each character’s habit (to quote Bordeau) and presenting it to the audience for consideration, admiration, denigration and/or titillation
It quickly built the world – the 80s, the greedy old Thatcherites and the yuppies, the bored wives and the fearsome warrior women, all treated like meat no matter what they do, the concord and the cigars and the birdsong, the English class strata, the UK in a globalised world trying to hammer nails into the top – and the socio-political commentary, while not shoved in your face, is much clearer than when you read the books.
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