'Rivals' Will Drop In on Hulu & Disney+ in Mid-October

It's the last days of summer in Scotland, and the Edinburgh Film Festival is in full swing with film debuts and TV news. Netflix isn't the only one rolling out its highest-end U.K. series for the back half of 2024. Disney+ also turned up with its A-list ensemble series, Rivals, though, unlike its tech company competition, the House of Mouse has to hope the series will hit big enough on at least one side of the pond to earn a second season. Considering the material, this may have to be a grassroots effort for Americans, as Hulu seems perplexed on how to market a "bonkbuster."

Rivals is based on the Jilly Cooper novel of the same name, the second installment in her 11-books-and-counting Rutshire Chronicles. (Though her fellow 1980s contemporaries like Judith Kratz are better known, the Rivals installment of the Rutshire Chronicles initially caused British writer Sue Limb to coin the term in the late 1980s.) It makes sense for Disney+ UK to want to start there with the series. 

The series is also getting an assist from casting. The leading men who will be, ahem, anchoring the bonkbuster are American favorites David Tennant (Good Omens, etc.) and Aidan Turner (Poldark). Despite the latter sporting a rather unfortunate set of period-appropriate mustaches, both are dressed to kill in that way that upper-class British dudes just are.

Here's how Disney+ is billing the show at the festival:

Part of Cooper’s bestselling Rutshire Chronicles, Rivals is set against the backdrop of the excess and antics of the power-grabbing social elite of 1980s England. The series chronicles the cutthroat world of independent television in 1986 and the long-standing rivalry between ex-Olympian, MP, and notorious womanizer Rupert Campbell-Black and his neighbor Tony Baddingham, controller of Corinium Television. In Rivals, the two fight over TV presenter Declan O’Hara, a fierce intellectual with an even fiercer temper who is wooed to Corinium from the BBC. 

Alex Hassell (The Miniaturist) plays Rupert Campbell-Black, Tennant is Tony Baddingham, and Turner plays Declan O’Hara. The rest of the ensemble includes Katherine Parkinson (Doc Martin), Danny Dyers (EastEnders), Nafessa Williams (Twin Peaks), Claire Rushbrook (Sherwood), Annabel Scholey (The Sixth Commandment), Victoria Smurfit (Bloodlands),  Oliver Chris (The Crown), Lisa McGrillis (Deadwater Fell), Emily Atack (Dad’s Army), Rufus Jones (Four Lives), Luke Pasqualino (Shadow & Bone), and Catriona Chandler (Pistol). 

Unlike most British series, Rivals was created and written under the American format of a writers room with series adapters Dominic Treadwell-Collins (A Very English Scandal) and Laura Wade (The Riot Club) penning episodes alongside Sophie Goodhart (Sex Education), Marek Horn (Wild Swimming), Dare Aiyegbayo (The Dumping Ground), Kefi Chadwick (Avoidance), Mimi Hare & Clare Naylor (The Accidental Husband), and Tray Agyeman & Sorcha Kurien Walsh (The Pink Pill). 

Director Elliot Hegarty (Ted Lasso) helmed the bulk of the series, with Dee Koppang O’Leary (The Crown) and Alexandra Brodski (Somewhere Boy) also directing. Treadwell-Collins, Wade, and Hegarty are listed as executive producers, along with author Cooper, Alexander Lamb, Felicity Blunt, and Lee Mason for Disney+.

Rivals will arrive with all episodes as a binge on Friday, October 18, 2024, on Hulu and the Hulu tile on Disney+ in the U.S. and Disney+ everywhere else.