Packed with sex, excess and fabulous awfulness, this adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 80s bonkbuster starts as gloriously as it means to go on. Champagne all round!
elcome to Rutshire!” announces Lizzie , one of its calmer denizens and the only one with enough time between champagne-quaffing and nethers-slapping to ease a new family’s passage into the bonkers, bonking Cotswolds set with conventional niceties. And what a welcome it’s been!
Disney+’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s infamous 1980s bonkbuster starts as gloriously as it means to go on. Within the first 15 minutes we have the ne plus ultra of cads and bounders Rupert Campbell-Black banging a journalist in Concorde’s loos as it breaks the sound barrier and corks pop.
In short, all is as it should be. Cooper’s 1988 bestseller has not been Disneyfied. The streaming service has kept the sex, excess, the fabulous awfulness of the people and at least as much of Cooper’s always under-acknowledged talent for observation, parsing of social mores and her emotional intelligence as any adaptation ever manages – and a lot more than some. Above all, it keeps the rambunctious joy of the thing. Even the naked tennis scene works. And if you can do that, you can do anything.
Declan and Cameron are at each other’s throats – she wants ratings and splashes, he wants integrity and a desk on set. I’m sure they’ll keep it professional though. Lord Baddingham is consumed with class envy and rage over Campbell-Black’s Teflon coating of privilege and charm but is busy wheeling and dealing to protect his own interests while he waits for a chance to unseat his nemesis.
In the same way I never liked to think of all the painstaking work that went into drawing the cartoons I used to watch on Sunday mornings, I don’t like to dwell on how much effort must have gone in to judging how much of the 80s’ attitudes could be retained without offending modern sensitivities and disposed of without ruining the essence of the thing. But it has all paid off.
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