The Questions of Class and Power at the Heart of Hulu’s Scandalous Rivals

Hulu’s deliciously soapy Rivals is one of the most unabashedly fun television series of the Fall. Based on the megapopular British romance novel of the same name by Dame Jilly Cooper, the series is a delightful throwback to the heyday of raunchy, ridiculous primetime dramas that were guilty pleasures in all the best possible ways. 

The show is gleefully and unapologetically entertaining, filled to bursting with sex, scandals, corporate backstabbing, greed, betrayal, and a sort of quintessentially 1980s excess that includes everything from sky-high shoulder pads to lavish cocktail parties. (Plus its soundtrack is nothing but bangers.) Everything about Rivals is aimed at having a good time, which is a big part of the series’ appeal. 

“I love it,” Aidan Turner, who plays journalist Declan O’Hara, tells Paste with a laugh. “I love it because it’s ‘high-end trashy’. I did wonder, when I first read the scripts if it would translate when we shot it—how much fun it is, how funny it is. There are so many brilliant actors in the show and they’re so funny. The scripts are so strong. The story feels quite original and quintessentially British too, which I think will travel well in America. I think it’s got a lot for everyone. I think it covers almost every base it could possibly cover.”

Yet, for all the ways that Rivals aims to titillate, many of the series’ most compelling aspects can be found in the rare moments it looks beyond physical gratification or social scandal. Its story has surprising things to say about power—what sort of people want it, who traditionally has access to it, and what those who possess it are willing to do to keep it—and features multiple relationships that cross boundaries in both personal and professional capacities.

“Honestly, [the show] confronts a lot,” Nafessa Williams, who plays high-powered American television producer Cameron Cook, says. “Yes, it’s sexy, it’s steamy, but it also encourages us to face prejudiced environments and assumptions, and it has this really clear-eyed modern sensibility of what the world was like in the 80s.”

Given how much sex and scandal are at the heart of this series, viewers might be surprised to learn that one of the driving themes of Rivals is class, specifically the unspoken tensions and judgments within and among the upper-crust world of its setting. While the story delights in both presenting and skewering the excesses of the wealthy British elite—complete with sprawling country houses, adorable hunting hounds, and perfectly manicured grounds—its hedonistic vibes are grounded in still-contemporary questions of belonging and self-worth. 

“We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, and I forget which clever actor said it, but somebody said, ‘All of our characters are either improving their class, denying their class, or escaping their class.’ And I think that’s so true,” Turner says. “Everyone’s on the move all the time and it feels quite transaction in places: Somebody wants something from somebody, what do they have to give to get that? And when they get it are they happy? And if not, what do they need to swap out for something else then?”

Rivals ostensibly follows the conflict between television executive Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) and former Olympian turned Tory politician Rupert Campbell Black (Alex Hassell), two men from very different backgrounds. Campbell-Black is an eight-generation aristocrat while Baddingham is a lower-class scrabbler who married his way into a title. 

But for Turner’s Declan, the question of class is more complicated than most. He doesn’t have generational wealth like Rupert, and while both he and Tony married into money, he lacks Baddingham’s public school background and connections. He isn’t as rich as many of his Rutshire neighbors, but his fame as a journalist gives him a significant level of influence and access he likely wouldn’t have otherwise. And, perhaps most importantly, he’s an Irishman, and his Wicklow roots set him apart in this society in ways that few other characters experience.

“For somebody like Declan…look, I think he’s mystified and a bit dumbfounded by it all. Because he’s an outsider too, he’s Irish. He’s coming in at this like, what is this crazy world you’re all living in? This doesn’t seem normal at all. It’s a mystery for him, too. It’s something that does feel, in lots of ways, quintessentially British, this class system. But it also allows these characters to come in and out of each other’s worlds—both comfortably and uncomfortably speaking. People who might sit in a higher class delving below to get that why want. And you can see how uncomfortable they might be—or boisterous or arrogant, and you see all these different energies change as these classes meet each other. But that’s what makes it interesting.”

As the lone American on the series’ canvas—and its only Black character—Cameron is thrown into a world that’s quite different from the one she left behind.