I was mid-way through a black-tie dinner at Versailles when I heard that Disney would be adapting Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. Luke Pasqualino’s announcement on Instagram was enough to tear me away from a fireworks display in the historical gardens – a Cooper-worthy scene in itself - and I stared at it agog. Finally.
I first tore through the book in my teens. I’d already read Riders, the prequel that introduces the incorrigible Rupert Campbell-Black, romanticises his legendary philandering and spotlights his show jumping career. I was horse mad and used to flick past the intimidatingly vivid sex scenes to get to the pony talk. That’s what kept me reading. I fell hook line and sinker for romantic storylines back then – not much has changed - but Riders refused to come up trumps. I didn’t feel any loyalty to Helen – Rupert’s ill-fated wife – and so was non-plussed when she fell for the Heathcliffe-adjacent Jake Lovell.
Enter Rivals, the second instalment in Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles series and the romantic blockbuster I’d been looking for. In it the reformed rake trope gets a Barbour-laden makeover. Tall with blonde hair and blue eyes, Rupert is described as ‘the most handsome man in England’. He owns a sprawling country estate, fields heaving with million-pound show jumpers, walls peppered with Stubbs. Now divorced, the father of two children and the Tory Minister for Sport, Rupert meets the shy and rapidly retiring Taggie when she moves to the fictional county with her family. Overshadowed by her father (TV star Declan O’Hara), mother (beautiful and feckless ex-actor Maud), Taggie is Cooper’s take on Cinderella and true to form she bewitches Rupert quite by accident.
Just as I skim-read those Riders sex scenes in my early teens, I hurried through chapters that dissected the politics of television production to follow Rupert and Taggie’s love story at pace. Taggie, wide-eyed, full-lipped and dark haired – imagine Camila Morrone in Daisy Jones & The Six, less kaftans, more turtlenecks – represents everything Rupert isn’t. Loving, homely and excruciatingly insecure, she fast becomes Rupert’s anchor, his grounding force and his reason to be good. She is also his damsel. Stick a woman crying out for protection in front of a fictional playboy and watch his honour make him doubly attractive. It’s not woke, but it works.
Beloved by legions of Cooper loyalists, the pressure to get Rupert right is on. Those are some big riding boots to step into and woe betide the casting team that misfires. In Alex Hassell though, the Royal Shakespeare Company alum that Disney has cherry-picked for the big-name role, they have likely locked down the UK’s latest heartthrob. Pegged to snatch the baton from Normal People’s Paul Mescal, Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page and Emily In Paris’s Lucien Laviscount, Hassell’s appeal is plain to see. His screen-ready looks come with the sort of built-in sardonicism that surely bagged him the role in his first audition. ‘He’ll do,’ Jilly Cooper stans the world over will say approvingly.
Sex Education’s Bella Maclean will be Disney’s Taggie, David Tenant will play Rupert’s self-important neighbour Lord Tony Baddingham, Pasqualino, Baddingham’s charming younger brother Bas, Poldark’s Aidan Turner will take on the role of Declan and Victoria Smurfit (Bloodlands, Once Upon A Time) will play his wife Maud. A stellar cast for a stellar storyline. Roll on Rivals.