Stroud author and star actors at Disney show launch

We are introduced to Lord Tony Baddingham in the television adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals by watching him land in a helicopter and then nail a hole-in-one in croquet.

It’s a level of cool elitism that’s perfectly befitting of his wealthy, well-connected character, but one the actor playing him – none other than David Tennant – thought he could never pull off.

“That hole-in-one, I would like you to know, was probably the greatest day of my professional life,” laughs the 53-year-old Scottish actor, known for Doctor Who and Good Omens.

“Elliot Hegarty, our lead director, set up this shot through the croquet hoop and said: ‘You just need to knock it’. Well, I’m not going to be able to do that. Surely, there’s going to be some CGI trickery here… He said: ‘We’ll just keep it running till it does’.

“I thought: ‘The crew are gonna hate me by take 402; this is gonna feel like the show that’s never gonna end’. And I nailed it on take four.

“I’ve never felt more pleased with myself than that moment. I felt like Tony Baddingham in that second, I felt like a sporting god.”

This introduction to the protagonist, and, indeed, the society in the fictional Rutshire in which Rivals is set, is the perfect way into a story about wealth, greed, romance, duplicity and darkness – one which Cooper herself holds in incredibly high regard.

“I think Rivals is my favourite novel because I love the characters so much,” says the 87-year-old author.

“Even the most ruthless display moments of tenderness and vulnerability, and the shyest and gentlest show courage and integrity as true love blossoms.”

The story centres around Tennant’s Tony, who owns the local regional television franchise Corinium Television, deep in a heartland of rural England that’s all Barbour jackets and clinking champagne glasses.

“Tony is very well-connected, very rich, and is very interested in making sure that that continues and indeed grows,” explains Tennant.

“He’s a man who is motivated certainly by wealth, certainly by power, but also by the fact that he doesn’t quite come from the upper echelons of society.

"He’s a victim of class struggle in as much as he never quite went to the right school, he never quite sits at the top table as effortlessly as Rupert Campbell-Black (who, of course, becomes his nemesis) who has all that given to him by virtue of birth, which Tony finds almost impossibly frustrating.”

The story is set amidst the year of franchise renewal for the television station, and Tony is willing to trample anyone who gets in the way of his global ambitions for the station.

"As Tennant mentions, local MP and Minister for Sport Rupert Campbell-Black, played by The Boys’ Alex Hassell, becomes Tony’s nemesis, and he has a reputation of bed-hopping and feuding with an effortless charisma.

“The characters inhabit worlds that are elite…” says Hassell, 44.

“They’re very, very privileged, lots of them… It’s something about the world that is quite alien to, I’d imagine, a lot of the audience, certainly to me – I never experienced that kind of world. But amazingly relatable at the same time.

“The characters are so multifaceted, the things that they’re dealing with, the sexual relationships, the power of relationships – I think you can identify with them and get on board with them, whilst also looking at it from afar, being like: that’s a weird way of living, and I’m glad that I don’t, ultimately, have those pressures.”

Set in the 1980s like Dame Jilly’s novel, which was released in 1988, Rivals is now something of a period piece, its cast reluctantly admit.

“I think the thing about Rivals… this is how old I am, the 80s is a period drama now, isn’t it?” says Danny Dyer, who plays Cockney electronics multi-millionaire Freddie Jones.

“And it really is such an odd decade – I don’t think there’s any other decade quite like it, just with the looks… the music. I mean, what a decade for music, the 80s, and we’ve got some great tunes in this as well.”

Dame Jilly’s work is known for its progressive approach to sexuality and its nuanced look at society, so in adapting Rivals some 40 years after it was published, it was important to make its sexual politics more aware, more modern. At the heart of that was Hessell’s charismatic Lothario Rupert.

“There’s something of the exploration of the characters for which sex or sexual relations are a currency…” he notes.

“And I think that particularly was, maybe, prevalent in that kind of era, in that world – and to some degree, still is.”

There’s also a consideration of the role of class in British society, how there’s a difference between old money and new money, the rich and the wealthy.

“I think the thing about Freddie is it’s about what class he is, and the fact that he’s done so well coming from where he comes from, and… even though he’s got money, he doesn’t really fit in with this sort of social aspect of the people around him,” reflects Dyer.

“I don’t think he likes them very much, and I find that interesting. Because a lot of people do earn a lot of money, and then they want to buy their way into this sort of aristocratic world. But it’s apparent from the off he’s doing it more for his wife, who loves it.”

Of course, as with any story created by Dame Jilly Cooper, Rivals promises to be an outrageously fun, sexy, romantic and propelling watch, sprinkled with the kind of serious conversations and reflections that made her work stand the test of time. For Cooper herself, it’s a delight to see the details of her favourite novel brought to the screen.

“I’m a romantic – so despite the mistress swapping and the business and sexual entanglements, I like true love blossoming in so many of the characters,” she says.

“I also like some of the humour: Rupert Campbell-Black after his television trouncing by Declan, grumbling that he feels like a football after the FA Cup Final. And living in The Cotswolds myself, I am so enraptured by the way the beautiful valleys, and the honey-coloured houses have been portrayed.”

Rivals comes to Disney+ on Friday, October 18.