Hulu’s Rivals is a juicy soapy drama about feuding aristocrats whose professional and personal lives intertwine as they seek to top one another in all areas of life. The series, which stars a murderer’s row of British talent—David Tenant, Aidan Turner, Alex Hassell, and Katherine Parkinson, to name but a few—is based on the work of the iconic Jilly Cooper, the multi-million selling bestseller c Forget the blockbuster: Cooper had us all reading the bonkbuster!
British writer Sue Limb coined the term “bonkbuster” to describe a specific trend of commercial romances that were popular in the 1970s and ’80s. These books, also bluntly known as “shopping and f**king novels”, were characterized by their stories of glamorous women with glossy lives and the romantic entanglements to match. They blended the ’80s primetime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty with second wave feminist fervor. A bonkbuster needs more than wall-to-wall (or against the wall) sex to qualify for the subgenre. These books need to be exceedingly long (anything below 500 pages is too easy), overwhelmed with characters and plot, and both emotionally earnest and proudly ridiculous. Their narratives often span decades, continents, and generations of messy, rich, and devious families. And yes, everyone involved either has to be extremely wealthy or adjacent to wealth. Sorry, fellow poors. This is a genre for pure fantasy and schadenfreude.
The most famous bonkbuster writer is the late great Jackie Collins, whose delicious doorstops of Hollywood drama and mob scheming made her a worldwide icon and introduced millions of women to the pleasures of non-vanilla missionary sex. But Jilly Cooper is not far behind, and her brand of bonking is uniquely English: the posh thoroughbred horndog. Where Collins and her descendants partied by Malibu pool sides, Cooper made the horse trials of Chipping Norton and the country houses of the landed gentry her playground.
Set in the fictional rural community of Rutshire (get it?), Cooper’s novels promised a deep dive into the privileged world of the British upper classes, a world full of money, power, and triple-barrelled surnames. The primary protagonist is Rupert Campbell-Black, a nefarious seducer of women whose body count is beaten only by his extravagant wealth. Reportedly inspired by Andrew Parker-Bowles, the ex-husband of the current British Queen, Rupert is a merciless seducer who will step on or screw anyone to get to the top. He starts out as an Olympic showjumper and rather old-school brute, but over the course of the series evolves into a mildly tamer gentleman who becomes a government minister.
Cooper’s work doesn’t beat about the bush – ahem – not with titles like Riders, Tackle!, and Mount! Everyone is doing it but they’re also very funny about it. the key to a good bonkbuster is to take things just seriously enough but not be so po-faced as to turn all of that bed-hopping fun into emotional torture. Sure, there’s sex, but most of the fun in these gigantic novels comes from the gossip and wit (they also teach us a very important lesson: Ladies, do not fall for the guy who can’t take a joke.)
One of the big promises of the bonkbuster, much like the romance genre as a whole, is of an insight into an otherwise cloistered world. These books are set in worlds of obscene wealth, ruthless power players, and the kinds of scandals that people file superinjunctions to keep out of the press. If Jackie Collins opened the doors to Hollywood glamour and sleaze, Jilly Cooper was a guide through the British class system. As a long-time member of this social scene and a dedicated supporter of the Conservative Party (ick), Cooper knows this world inside out. It’s a patently ridiculous one that she has immense affection for. Even strident lefties can admit to extracting some pleasure from this hedonistic world. Cooper’s novels are overloaded with people in big houses eating amazing food and wearing the best clothes (and perfumes, which are namedropped regularly.)
Cooper is still publishing her Rutshire novels, but the series is still a relic of another time. The bonkbuster became a thing in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s because they were part of a burgeoning sexual revolution. When Cooper started writing novels, women weren’t allowed to have their own bank accounts without their husband’s permission. You couldn’t file for divorce in England in the ’70s unless your marriage had lasted for three years or more. The idea of women getting to have freewheeling sex lives and not be punished by death for it was still a new concept in Hollywood, even as the studio system crumbled. Women wanted stories of liberation and fantastical pleasures. It’s no wonder that Cooper, Collins, and company became such big sellers.
For newbies to Cooper’s books, take caution. They are very much products of their era, with moments of misogyny, dubious consent, and, yes, extremely Tory. Even later books suffer from some of these issues, such as a moment in the most recent novel where a female character laments all of “this #MeToo business” (which, in fairness, also sounds exactly like something a stuck-up conservative Englishwoman would say.) But there is a reason that Cooper’s work has endured over the decades. It’s unpretentious soap, a highly self-aware series of romps and scandals that lets the reader see how the other half lives. And f*cks. At a time when we’re stuck in the endless cycle of “are sex scenes in film/TV/literature necessary” discourse, it’s nice to be reminded that good old-fashioned wholesome horniness will always find a way to the top.
Kayleigh Donaldson is a critic and pop culture writer for Pajiba.com. Her work can also be found on IGN, Slashfilm, Uproxx, Little White Lies, Vulture, Roger Ebert, and other publications. She lives in Dundee.
