Anyone who has read my latest reviews may consider that I am a difficult person to please. A weird girl who likes to get into trouble with others. Who likes to say bad things about everything, just because. And none of this is true. Well… Almost nothing. I love saying bad things, but with discretion. Like Lord Baddingham, one side of the barricade RivalsI grow my hates “as if they were wild orchids.”
Rivals is an adaptation of the second volume of the book series. The Ruthshire Chronicles and, according to the Disney+ synopsis, “dives headlong into the cut-throat world of television where the hairstyles are big and the ambitions are even bigger.” This is because the action takes place in 1986, that unforgettable year in which the World Cup was held in Mexico, Portugal joined the EEC and Vera Roquette came to our screens with the Now choose. Still in the synopsis, we can read that “business is done in conference rooms, but also in bedrooms. No one knows for sure who will emerge victorious. If every man and woman cares only about their own navel, can true love flourish? spoiler alert: There is no shortage of flowers here. About love, I don’t know, but about the so-called branches on the foreheads of different spouses, guaranteed. But since those who sow usually have their foreheads equally sown, everything is balanced.
The new Disney+ series is really good and I can’t say that it won me over from the first shot, because the first shot is Rupert Campbell-Black’s aristocratic ass and I have a marriage to preserve. curious fact: the first book by Jilly Cooper, author of Rivals now adapted into a series, was a work of non-fiction titled How to stay married. Curious to say the least, considering the number of adulterous people that populate the author’s universe.
[o trailer de “Rivais”:]
Butts and other erogenous zones aside, which is something that is not missing in this series without gender discrimination, Rivals In fact, he had everything to please me and he did. It portrays the universe of television in the United Kingdom, a beacon of public and private audiovisual in Europe, since always. It shows the shady side of the elites and I’m not talking about promiscuity. And there are real characters, who are capable of a gesture of great generosity and, in the next scene, they are exquisite sons of mares. That is, people like us.
Lord Tony Baddingham, the owner of private regional television, will poach Declan O’Hara from the BBC. Declan is a kind of mustachioed Miguel Sousa Tavares who wants to get under the skin of his interviewees mercilessly, and on the public broadcaster he is editorially bullied by the then Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher in turn has Rupert Campbell-Black, Tony’s arch-enemy, as an advisor. Aristocrat, former Olympic show jumping champion and, in the words of Tony’s wife Monica, “a virus that all wives catch sooner or later.”
Tony will do everything he can to revalidate his channel’s license, make Declan’s show a ratings hit, and crush Rupert. In turn, Declan wants numbers, but he doesn’t want to sacrifice his integrity as a journalist. At the same time, he wants to maintain a marriage that has seen better days, while his wife Maud, a former actress who has difficulty dealing with aging and monogamy, wants to bring Olympian Rupert into her bed. Rupert prefers the newer version, Declan and Maud’s eldest daughter, Taggie. A gem of a girl, who doesn’t really know what to do with her life, so she takes care of organizing, caring for, feeding and cleaning the lives of those around her. But deep down he wants to clean Rupert’s abs. And no one here will judge you for that.
And we have Cameron Cook, a black American who was hired by Baddingham to raise the sharethat she wants to grow up in a white, patriarchal environment and that raises the tension of the men around her in different ways. And neighbor Lizzie, married to a pile of manure, who hosts the afternoon show and can’t see the amazing woman he’s married to because his ego obstructs his view. And Fred is married to Mousie, who is more interested in her gladioli, her social advancement, and controlling her husband’s calorie intake than her own husband. And Monica, Baddingham’s wife, who supports her husband in everything, forming a partnership that helped him get to where he is, but whose loyalty has limits. And another handful of interesting characters, well constructed and representative of an era facing a paradigm shift in customs, freedoms and options in bed.
David Tennant is brilliant at playing villains and Lord Tony Baddingham is further proof of this. I recommend Jessica Jonesan extremely underrated Marvel series in my opinion, in which Tennant is a Machiavellian dream destroyer. I had never seen Alex Hassel before and enjoyed every moment. And I’m not going to particularize the scene in which he plays naked tennis. Far from me. In fact, the performances are generally excellent and almost all of them show their bodies relatively explicitly, with or without athleticism, standard measurements and facial harmonization, which I especially liked. I advance until one of the most sensual scenes is starring a man and a woman who are not the prototype of the sweet for the eyesbut they show how it is done.
It’s good entertainment with substance and multiple layers. There is a very well achieved mix between the reconstruction of the era with references to real characters and events, and the fictional story. There is naive romance, extremely depraved people, mercenaries capable of doing anything to surpass others and many others with their values in the right place. It makes you want to watch it in one sitting (I saw it in two days, just due to lack of time), the performances are finely cut, the art direction takes us to the colorful and hairy 80s and for television lovers this is a delight in 8 episodes, which I sincerely hope does not end here, especially since there is another series of adaptable books.
I’m going to take a break here Rivals and I use my airtime for the following: since I can remember, the first thing I do when I start the day, and/or when I get home, is turn on the television. When only RTP existed, I saw everything it had to offer, including the 70X7 and the rural television. I remember not looking forward to the weekend, because there was no Tieta of Agreste. My favorite day of the week is Monday because it was 1,2,3. Of course, then came the private channels that I also consumed with pleasure, YouTube, the platforms and substitutes and I go to all of them. Because it is part of my job, because I am addicted, but fundamentally because I can and I have money to do it. The ongoing liquidation of the public television channel seems so absurd to me and demonstrates such a great departure from what the “real country” is, so used in political discourse and so ignored by the decision-making power, that I sincerely hope that The Dream wet private canals does not come true. At one point Baddingham says that “revenge is a dish best served on television” and I hope that RTP continues to take revenge on those who want to attack him by serving the country.
Returning to the usual programming: in the last episode of RivalsThere is a speech that is a love letter to the magic box. I hope that the gentlemen of transmission listen to it with affection and announce a new season, for the love of television, money or simply to see people paint with pleasure and without shame.
Source: Observadora
