What do you think about when you think about the 80s? Massive hair? Dewberry perfume oil from The Body Shop? Wham! on Top of the Pops? Hair mousse? (Seriously, does anyone use hair mousse any more?)
Everything felt bigger back then. The era of Thatcherism and yuppies too, but let’s not focus on the rise of rampant capitalism and instead let’s chat about Rivals. It’s the new series on Disney Plus that’s based on Jilly Cooper’s well-known novel of the same name.
Rivals depicts the fictional story of the competition between Lord Tony Baddingham and Rupert Campbell-Black, but if you’re tuning out already then let me just cut to the chase. There’s a lot of sex in it.
And you don’t have to wait very long for this sex to kick off. It’s already happening in the opening 10 seconds of the show. The male stars – David Tennant, Aidan Turner and Alex Hassell – also spend a fair bit of the show naked. In fact, they were presented as a bit of a “midlife boy band” on a magazine cover with Jilly Cooper a few weeks back.
The WhatsApp messages I’ve been getting about the show are from shocked friends, surprised by the sex content – and the fact that much of it seems to be filmed through a female gaze (we see a lot of male flesh).
“I can’t watch it with my partner,” one friend said.
She also shared a screen grab featuring a still where Rupert Campbell-Black (played by Alex Hassell) is playing naked tennis with Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack with a pleasingly relatable and beautiful body).
Years ago, there used to be a show called Shooting Stars which featured Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. Whenever Reeves fancied one of the guests he’d rub his legs lasciviously to demonstrate his ardent feelings. This would of course be massively inappropriate now, but this was much of the female response to Rivals. There was a lot of rubbing of legs with glee.
To be clear, I wasn’t actually having sex in the 80s as I was too young back then (I focused on snogging strangers), but it’s clear that Rivals is triggering nostalgia for a different kind of sex than we commonly see these days. A wilder, more crazy kind perhaps? A heavy metal kind of sex? (It’s no accident that Robert Palmer’s song “Addicted to Love” features in the show).
The reality seems to be that British people are having less sex than ever. According to a national survey published in the British Medical Journal, nearly a third of men and women have not had sex in the past month. Married couples and those over 25 account for the biggest falls.
Interestingly however, Gen Z are also having less sex, so this isn’t just about couples who have gone off the boil due to the demands of work, looking after kids, pets, elderly parents and navigating a continuous stream of terrible news (oh, and Covid which meant most couples had to live in lockdown with their other half for more time than was healthy).
An American survey found that the number of young Californians aged 18 to 30 years who reported having no sexual partners in the prior year reached a decade high of 38 per cent. Researchers have identified a whole host of reasons as to why younger generations are having less sex. More sophisticated and addictive technology (everyone glued to their phones), stressful study and work schedules, and also perhaps a delay in young people growing up (more of them living at home which is hardly an aphrodisiac with parents bedrooms next door).
So, in the absence of having sex then, surely watching other people having it is understandable?
Okay back to Rivals. One of the key reasons it seems to have got so many hot under the collar is not just the amount of sex or the abundance of male arses. No, it’s also the type of sex depicted. It’s… well, enthusiastic.
It’s also often spontaneous (there’s a scene where Aidan Turner ravishes his wife which means they’re arguing one minute and in the full throes of passion the next). It’s the opposite of sex where you think about it for a long time, consider the outcomes, then decide to watch a box set instead. It’s choreographed of course and that choreography feels quite retro.
Let’s flag a few things right away. The 80s were not an ideal time when it came to sex (the horror of HIV, women feeling less empowered to state their needs, discrimination and persecution across the board), but Rivals isn’t about reality. If it was about reality then we possibly wouldn’t enjoy watching it.
Perhaps that’s why it resonates so much as we scroll mindlessly through our phones looking for dopamine hits. Wondering why we aren’t as perfect as the woman who gets up at 5am and has already run 12 miles and made bento box lunches for her three kids.
Or buying things we don’t need late at night whilst our partner snores gently next to us. Tired after working long days for demanding bosses with deadlines that often feel unachievable. We just want to escape to a world where “hunks” (another word nobody uses any more) grab their partners and get to it.
Oh, wouldn’t that be nice?
The 80s depicted in the series is one of boozy lunches, smoking non-stop and humping. It’s flirtation without any fears of the fall out. It’s Mötley Crüe before they felt sad and jaded. It’s a million miles away from “quiet luxury”, or minimalist interiors or meditation apps.
In my teens (in the late 80s) I would have competitions with friends to see how many boys I could snog in one night (my record was 17) and there’s no evidence of this time.
There is no evidence because there was no social media. We didn’t have cameras. Or phones. Or any way to document what had happened. It truly was the case of wondering whether you’d dreamt it all the next day. There may be a couple of men playing golf now who vaguely remember a girl with a massive orange perm who lunged at them at Crystals under-17 nightclub in Bromley.
“I miss those days,’” a friend said, “Everything just felt simpler.”
“I wonder if teens snog anymore,” I answered, reminiscing about a guy who looked a bit like the late Michael Hutchence but was about two feet shorter, and caused me to ‘pash on’ him for several hours.
Let’s pash on.
That was an actual phrase growing up. Snogging. Bonking. Shagging. All words which feel very old-fashioned now.
“How many are you going for tonight?” My best friend would ask as she slurped Thunderbird red label from a bottle concealed inside a brown paper bag.
Optimistic. That’s it. The idea that life was getting better and there’d be more adventures, more excitement, and more good times on the way. Perhaps Rivals has captured some of that spirit too? Perhaps it’s about more than just sex?
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