This novel from the 1980s was recently turned into a series on Disney+ of all places. I watched it because it has a bunch of actors I really like in it, including David Tennant and Aiden Turner (who is sporting a ridiculous Super Mario mustache). If you miss the 1980s and enjoy adult, “Dallas” style TV, you should check it out. The first scene is two people having sex in the lavatory on the Concorde and a few scenes later we get full frontal male nudity. Anyway, it was mindless and entertaining (and has some outstanding ‘80s music and fashion), and since it ended with a cliffhanger, I decided to pick up the book and see what happens next. Ugh. This was a DNF. I made it almost halfway through — page 322 of 706! — before bailing. I didn’t even make it as far as the cliffhanger. Why? Well, I could say that the election results have made it difficult for me to concentrate (true) but honestly I’m both bored by the story and put off by the relationships between some of the characters in terms of age differences and abuse. This was true of the TV series as well but it really is much more evident in the book.
Rivals is a soap opera kind of story with several main characters, lots of affairs, and cut-throat business. The business is television, specifically Corinium TV, which is applying to have its license renewed (that’s a whole thing but boring so I’m not going to even try to explain it). The chief exec at Corinium is a nasty SOB named Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant). He’s married but also having an affair with the American producer he brought in to shake up Corinium. Cameron Cook is hot, smart and a real ball buster. She has helped Corinium develop some very popular programming, but when they bring in Declan O’Hara (Aiden Turner), late of the BBC, things get messy. Declan is from Ireland and has a reputation for being a tough and excellent interviewer, but he is also a hothead (hello, stereotype!) who doesn’t take direction well from others. His wife Maud is a bored actress who is always looking for lovers, and his children are teens/college aged. His middle child Taggie is another main character in this story. She is 17 when this story begins; she is shy and has dyslexia, but she is also an outstanding cook. Taggie is a problematic character for me because Cooper makes her this vulnerable woman/child who needs protecting and can be ridiculously naive, but she is also super hot. Taggie catches the eye of the local Lothario, their neighbor Rupert Campbell-Black. In her author’s note, Cooper describes him as a “former show jumping champion and handsomest man in England with a fondness for liquor and other men’s wives.” He’s 20 years older than Taggie. In their first encounter, Rupert is playing naked tennis with another man’s wife. Later, at a dinner party that Taggie is catering, Rupert gropes her while she is serving, leading to major upheaval at the party. Taggie for her part is both repulsed and drawn to this guy. It’s gross. Anyway, Tony Baddingham hates Rupert for a variety of reasons, and eventually, Declan and Rupert join forces with Freddie Jones — an electronics tycoon from the lower/middle class whom Tony had been courting but also managed to offend — and the three decide they will put in a bid to try to take TV rights away from Corinium. Rupert, in an attempt to undermine Corinium’s bid, decides to seduce Cameron Cook and he has promised Declan to stay away from Taggie.
Both Taggie and Cameron have really troubling relationships. Taggie, as mentioned, is drawn to Rupert even though he is a perv. Cameron tends to get involved in relationships that are both emotionally and physically abusive, and this is related to her strange and unorthodox upbringing in the US. In the TV show, the relationship that I found most interesting was between Freddie Jones and a neighbor/writer named Lizzie Vereker, whose husband is a serial philanderer and talk show host at Corinium. Lizzie and Fred are played by Katherine Parkinson and Danny Dyer and they are outstanding. I didn’t get to the part in the novel that deals with their relationship (assuming that is part of the novel and not just invented for TV), which is a shame but honestly, this novel is a real stinker. I guess I’m not surprised that Cooper’s series of “Rutshire” novels, of which Rivals is #2, were so popular in the 1980s but I feel like this one has not aged well. There’s just a lot of creep and ick here. Pass.