A look inside Jilly Cooper’s raunchy show Rivals packed with nudity and sex scenes, including Emily Atack’s nude tennis match – The Sun

Packed with nudity, swearing and sex scenes, Jilly Cooper’s Rivals may have started out as a racy novel, but I can confirm that it has been reborn as an even sillier TV show.

Set in the 1980s, it unapologetically reflects the hedonism of the time – when making love and money were seen as the height of ambition for the jet set of the time.

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One of the cheeky eight-piece’s sassiest moments, which focus on the cutthroat world of independent TV in 1986, sees Emily Atack – better known as Charlotte in The Inbetweeners – playing nude tennis as the sassy Sarah Stratton.

She is married to Deputy Prime Minister Paul Stratton, but is also on good terms with the main character, Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black, played by Alex Hassell.

Although he is also naked, he does not cover up like Sarah when visitors come to his mansion.

Instead, he stands there proudly with his racket in his hand and demands to know, “Who the hell are you and why are you here?”

As in the original bonkbuster book, the tangled web of infighting, backstabbing and bed-hopping is spun around the mischievous Rupert, who lives in the aptly titled fictional Cotswolds county of Rutshire.

Legions of women want to seduce him, including three female characters Maud, Caitlin and Lizzie, all of whom desire him.

Maud says: “The only thing that convinced Caitlin to leave all her friends in London was the thought of living opposite Rupert Campbell-Black.”

Caitlin confirms: “I want him to delight me. I’m going to boarding school, I want to get him first.

Lizzie sighs: “I’m one of the few women here who hasn’t been raped by Rupert.”

But he’s not the only character to strip off in the saucy series, which hits Disney+ next month with an all-star cast.

Later in the show we see another pin-up, Aidan Turner, showing off his muscular torso, just as he did in period drama Poldark, the hit TV series that made him a star.

At 41, the Irish actor doesn’t look as slim or lithe as he did when he posed for the famous scythe shot on the BBC show almost a decade ago, but he’s guaranteed to bring in plenty of viewers to their fans.

Particularly in another scene where Aidan, sporting a thick moustache, is seen standing starkly in the bath, smoke rising into the air as he seductively puffs on a cigarette.

He plays TV presenter Declan O’Hara, who interviews the Deputy Prime Minister and brings up his relationship with his wife Sarah.

Expletives galore

O’Hara tells him grimly, “She says you have the size and stamina to compete with any championship racehorse.”

They’re just a few standout moments in a show that, in the first episode alone, features eight naked men, six boob shots and seven ass flashes.

And, as such a storyline demands, there are 28 expletives in the script.

Rivals will definitely start as well.

Just seconds later we are confronted with Rupert and a female journalist named Beattie joining the mile-high club.

He shows the woman, played by Annabel Scholey, pinned against the wall of an airplane toilet, her red high heels wedged against a towel rack and her head banging against the mirror.

She has to use one hand to hold the door closed while a cabin crew member bangs on it loudly, fully aware of what’s happening inside.

Even when Rupert has finished a sex session, he returns to his seat on the plane and winks at other women who would like to eat him alive.

All this to the sound of Robert Palmer’s anthem, Addicted To Love.

The soundtrack is just one part of a show set in the 1980s, with giant perms competing with even bigger shoulder pads, not to mention some seriously bling-bling watches and sports cars.

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The story is fueled by the competition between Rupert and ambitious TV station controller Lord Tony Baddingham, played by David Tennant, who is also Declan’s boss.

A cesspool of hate

The trio has a complicated relationship and it is not immediately clear why there is such a cesspool of hatred bubbling between them.

Things are just as fraught among their various friends and neighbors, all of whom are later seen – separately – in a long montage set to the sound of Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough.

The filthy rich residents of Rutshire – including Danny Dyer as technology mogul Freddie Jones – love nothing more than a wild party, but rarely show affection for their other halves. In one scene, Maud sums up the rural toffs best, saying that it’s “all horses and dogs and houses and cars and whoever has the longest driveway.”

She adds: “The men are all happy to ride something as long as they’re not married to it, and the women, Jesus, they haven’t had an orgasm since pony club camp.”

The bed-hopping and deception is used by Lord Baddingham to turn his back on his arch-rival Rupert, exposing his affair with Sarah during a soiree.

The two men face off, but Rupert reveals that far from having his political career ruined by the affair with the Deputy Prime Minister’s wife, he has been promoted to Sports Minister.

Rupert walks away and tells the squire, “You’re going to have to try harder if you want to beat me, Lord Baddingham.”

As the door closes behind him, Lord Baddingham puffs on his cigar and says, “Game on.”

• Rivals can be streamed on Disney+ from October 18.

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WHO’S WHO IN STEAMY NEW SERIES

RUPERT

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“SEX god” Campbell-Black is an ex-Olympic show jumper turned Tory MP, played by Alex Hassell.

Enjoys rolling in the hay with his mistress Sarah.

MR TONY

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HIS arch-rival is the highly ambitious Lord Tony Baddingham, boss of Corinium Television, played by former Doctor Who star David Tennant.

SARAH

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RUPERT’S lover is Sarah Stratton, played by Emily Atack.

Steamy scenes include nude tennis – and she happens to be married to the Deputy Prime Minister

PAUL

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RUFUS JONES stars as Deputy Prime Minister Paul Stratton, who first met his wife Sarah when he was already married and they began an affair.

MAUD

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FORMER actress and socialite Maud O’Hara, played by Victoria Smurfit, is Declan’s ‘fickle wife’.

You may remember her as Orla in Ballykissangel.

DECLAN

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TV presenter Declan O’Hara, played by Aidan Turner, begins to hate his new boss Lord Baddingham.

Declan is also father of Taggie.

FREDDIE

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DANNY DYER stars as tech mogul Freddie Jones, a working-class guy who has done well and has more than a whiff of Lord Sugar about him.

TAGGIE

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Bella Maclean voices the heart of Rupert instead of lining up for a casual bonk like Taggie.

The lothario admits that she “holds him a bit”.