Rivals Season 2 Review: TV’s Most Unapologetic Guilty Pleasure Is More Entertaining Than Ever

This Rivals season 2 review is Spoiler-Free.

There’s no other show on television quite like Hulu’s Rivals. An unabashedly over-the-top 1980s-set drama that gleefully embraces the idea that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, it’s a series that, at its heart, is about indulgence, both for its characters and for those watching along at home. Though it boasts a prestige cast, lavish sets, and a story that’s grounded in class tensions among the British society elite, it’s a show that determinedly refuses to take itself too seriously, and one that is deeply uninterested in lecturing its viewers about its characters’ (many, obvious) moral failings. 

Instead, the series enthusiastically embraces the hedonistic feel of its 80s setting, featuring lots of sex, bonkers plot twists, romantic longing of various stripes, and an expansive cast of characters who are a delight to both root for and to love to hate (often at the same time). A throwback that embodies the best of the world of the primetime soap operas we all used to obsess over, it’s a story of unabashed excess and debauchery that never forgets a key tenet of great television: Once upon a time, this whole enterprise was fun. And that’s what Rivals’ second season delivers in spades, turning everything we loved about its first outing up to eleven and adding in even more complex character dynamics and relationship arcs. 

Based on the late Dame Jilly Cooper’s beloved Rutshire Chronicles series, Rivals’ first season ostensibly revolved around the rivalry (read: intense dislike) between Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) and former Olympic showjumper turned Tory politician Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), whose personal conflicts ballooned into a battle over the future of a U.K. television empire. Joining forces with cynical TV journalist Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) and working-class tech billionaire Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer), Rupert and friends formed their own network (Venturer) to challenge Lord Tony’s more firmly entrenched Corinium for Rutshire’s TV franchise. This is, unsurprisingly, as fully ridiculous as it sounds, but it’s only one of the many genuinely insane plotlines going on at any given moment. 

Season 2 picks up almost immediately following the events of the first season finale. Cameron (Nafessa Williams) has fled to Rupert’s following a violent argument with Tony that ended with her hitting him over the head with an award statue and essentially leaving him for dead. Unfortunately for her — as the season 2 trailers have already revealed — Tony is very much alive, and more determined than ever to make his enemies pay. What follows is a deeply personal campaign to bring down Venturer and everyone connected to it, one that unspools across everything from programming meetings and posh dinners to polo matches and political races. But where much of Rivals’ first season focused on its trio of handsome male leads and the various sexual escapades that they, and what felt like the majority of the county, were constantly engaged in, its second outing expands the series’ focus in thrilling and satisfying new ways. 

Don’t worry, Rivals is still Rivals. There are still loads of naughty behavior in basically every episode, more than a few ill-advised hookups, and the attractive men in the series’ cast take their shirts off with comforting regularity. But season 2 also smartly allows the show’s women to step forward on their own terms. Yes, eldest O’Hara daughter, Taggie (Bella Maclean), is wrestling with what the kiss she shared with Rupert last season means for their relationship, and romance author Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson) is equally torn about her fling with Freddie, given that she’s still the only character on the series’ canvas who (mostly) seems to take her marriage vows seriously. But multiple secondary female characters are also given vastly more to do this time around, with Maud O’Hara (Victoria Smurfit), Lady Monica Baddingham (Claire Rushbrook), and Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack), each getting key arcs of their own. Atack’s Sarah, in particular, carries much of the season’s first episodes as her unexpected pregnancy and her husband’s run for reelection take center stage. 

Season 2 also introduces Hayley Atwell as a recast Helen Gordon, Rupert’s ex-wife and mother of his two children, alongside Rupert Everett as her husband Malise, who also happens to be Campbell-Black’s former mentor and show-jumping coach. Both share unique histories with Rupert that give viewers a better look into the man he used to be, and how his past has shaped the person he’s become. (Though Atwell’s American accent could use some work.)

The entirety of Rivals’ sprawling cast remains thoroughly excellent throughout. Tennant is clearly having the time of his life as an unrepentant baddie, gleefully chomping on cigars and gloating over his various nefarious plots while ‘80s bangers play in the background. Hassell gets the chance to play a more vulnerable and three-dimensional Rupert than we’ve seen before, softening his character’s playboy edges in a way that grants him an intriguing new depth and maturity. And while Maclean’s Taggie remains the show’s quiet heart, it’s Atack who steals much of this run of episodes, and makes her Sarah feel indispensable to the larger world of Rutshire in ways few of us likely expected.

This run of six episodes (five of which were available to screen for critics) comprises just half of Rivals second season, which will return later this year to screen its final half-dozen installments. And if this batch is anything to go by, they can’t get here soon enough. 

Rivals season 2 premieres Friday, May 15, on Hulu.