Rivals snared audiences with its racy sex scenes and glorious Eighties soundtrack (and shoulder pads) – and there’s even more on the way in the show’s forthcoming second season, according to star Danny Dyer.
Based on the late Jilly Cooper’s raunchy book series about the countryside town of Rutshire, the series made a surprise heartthrob out of TV hard man Dyer, who plays sensitive entrepreneur Freddie Jones.
With season two finally on its way more than a year and a half after Rivals first aired, Dyer, 48, has now told the Radio Times that season two is reaching new heights when it comes to explicit scenes.
“I go full frontal in this series, if they keep it in the edit,” he hinted. “It’s a night shoot, and it was cold, and I’d better not say any more.”
The first season of the Disney+ series was known for its equal opportunity approach to bare flesh; one of the most memorable moments seeing Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and aspiring TV star Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack) playing a game of tennis together in the nude.
Dyer continued: “Nobody’s under pressure to be naked if they don’t want to, but if a woman’s getting her breasts out, why shouldn’t I get it all out? I’ve got breasts as well, to be fair.”
The show’s many sex scenes are something the cast have spoken about at length. Back in September, David Tennant – who plays TV boss Lord Baddingham – revealed that he’d sustained an injury while filming a sex scene for season two.
The Doctor Who actor shared that he had “launched” himself onto a wooden bed when he “collided with the bed frame in a rather unfortunate way”.
“You can never quite tell when you’re going to fall over and embarrass yourself, can you, but you most certainly don’t want to do it whilst wearing a modesty pouch,” he said.
In a four-star review of the second season, The Independent’s Nick Hilton praised Rivals’ return to Rutshire, which he described as “a Disneyfied, sexed-up version of the Cotswolds”.
The season sees Rupert returning to his “wild stallion ways” after tearing himself away from his younger love interest Taggie (Bella MacLean), which Hilton argued is “just an excuse to include plenty of thrusting buttocks and heaving bosoms”.
“The sex is silly… and never overly explicit, because, at its heart, Rivals is an expensive soap opera,” he wrote.
Rivals season two arrives on Disney+ on Friday 15 May.
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