TV Show review
Review basis: 2 seasons, 14 episodes · through June 5, 2026
October 18, 2024 · TV-MA · Returning Series
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
Rivals is a raunchy British period comedy-drama set in 1986-87 fictional Rutshire. It follows the rivalry between Tory MP and ex-Olympian Rupert Campbell-Black and ambitious TV executive Tony Baddingham amid cutthroat independent television, upper-class parties, affairs, and business deals. The show stays close to Jilly Cooper's 1988 novel with lots of sex, un-PC jokes, and 80s excess. A Black actress plays the prominent ambitious American TV producer Cameron Cook, a role described with pale skin in the source novel, adding audience-visible diversity to an otherwise period-typical cast.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Rivals.
Woke representation / casting
Nafessa Williams plays Cameron Cook, an ambitious and competent American TV producer with central professional and romantic arcs. The source novel described the character with pale skin; this stands out as visible diversity in a mostly white 1980s British upper-class Cotswolds setting.
Woke political dialogue
Brief period-appropriate nods to Thatcher politics, Section 28, AIDS, and workplace power abuses appear, but the show keeps the novel's un-PC jokes, smut, and attitudes intact with no sustained modern lectures or activist framing.
Identity-driven story themes
The narrative focuses on class rivalry, personal ambition, sex, and 80s TV industry hedonism. Incidental gay male relationships occur in period context; the prominent Cameron Cook role involves a source-material casting shift but does not center identity politics plots.
Western institutional / cultural critique
The story shows cutthroat TV business, powerful men's abuses (including one assault cover-up), class snobbery, and conservative political figures, but the overall tone is satirical, affectionate, and hedonistic rather than ideological attacks on Western institutions, patriarchy, or capitalism.
Woke character or canon changes
Cameron Cook was cast with a Black actress unlike the novel's pale-skinned description; other changes include some plot adjustments (such as character arcs or deaths in season 2) that Jilly Cooper approved, with few other identity-driven canon shifts.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Public and critical reaction has been largely positive for the racy and un-PC spirit; most complaints concern book deviations rather than accusations of woke or DEI messaging, with very little organized anti-woke criticism found.
Creator track record context
Jilly Cooper publicly admired Thatcher, supported Conservatives, and criticized feminism and political correctness. Dominic Treadwell-Collins previously rejected diversity box-ticking on EastEnders; other contributors show mostly professional or mild class-focused work without strong recurring identity or activist patterns.
Production
