First look at Disney’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals

Dame Jilly Cooper’s “devastatingly handsome hero” Rupert Campbell-Black has been reimagined for Disney’s new adaptation of Rivals.

Not since Colin Firth emerged from the lake in Pride and Prejudice has a character looked quite so smouldering in a white shirt.

Alex Hassell has been cast as the caddish toff Campbell-Black, a former Olympic show jumper turned Tory minister, legendary for his philandering.

In the Rutshire Chronicles series of novels, Campbell-Black has blond hair and “denim blue” eyes.

This has been changed for the Disney+ series after the producers settled on Hassell, 43, who previously played Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The first photograph of the actor in character shows him with a pack of assorted dogs, shirt unbuttoned.

Newly released images also show David Tennant as Campbell-Black’s arch-rival, Lord Baddingham, while Poldark’s Aidan Turner is television star Declan O’Hara.

Other pictures released by Disney+ as a teaser for the series feature Bella Maclean as Taggie O’Hara, Declan’s daughter; Katherine Parkinson as Lizzie Vereker, a romantic novelist; and Nafessa Williams as Cameron Cook, a US television executive brought in to produce Declan’s show.

The first book in the Rutshire Chronicles series, Riders, published in 1985, introduced readers to Campbell-Black and his upper-crust Cotswolds set. Dame Jilly based the fictional English county of Rutshire on Gloucestershire, where she lives.

Rivals, published in 1988, picks up with Campbell-Black retired from showjumping and now the Tory Minister for Sport. His career has survived a minor scandal in which he had an affair with both the wife and teenage daughter of the Foreign Secretary.

It remains to be seen whether Disney+ will change the tone of the novel, written long before the era of #MeToo.

Dame Jilly believes that people had more sex during the era in which the book is set. “I’m convinced the reason people aren’t having as much sex is because everybody takes so much exercise. Everybody is running nowadays, and if they’re not, they’re going to the gym.

“And how can you possibly have sex when you’re so exhausted?”

Disney+ has billed the eight-part series as a “blockbuster saga” packed full of romantic entanglements, dastardly deals and plenty of sex.

A follow-up to Riders, it is set in the ruthless world of 1980s television, where Lord Baddingham runs a station named Corinium.

Dame Jilly recently told The Telegraph that she had seen the first episode “and it is absolutely thrilling”.

When the series was announced, she said: “Throughout my childhood, my favourite word was ‘Disney’ and, by miraculous coincidence, greater-than-ever Disney are joining forces with an utterly brilliant drama company, Happy Prince, to turn my novel into a TV series.

“I know they will bring the boardroom battles and love triangles of my characters to life - particularly those of my devastatingly handsome hero. I cannot wait to see who will be stepping into his shoes.”

Her novels are known for their raunchy scenes, and the production employed the services of two intimacy coordinators.

Turner revealed all in an interview, saying: “We have so much sex on our show, we have to have two intimacy coaches. Two!” Working on the drama was the most fun he had “on any job in my entire life”, he added: “We’re in the Cotswolds. Every day we’re in a different, huge manor house, having garden parties.”

The cast also features Danny Dyer as self-made electronics millionaire Freddie Jones.

Dame Jilly said that she would like the series to introduce her books to a new generation. “I’m geriatric, so young people might realise who I am,” she said.

The series will air later this year.