I’m sitting on the sofa, holding a cheese and onion Pringle between my sweaty fingers, while I watch a man furiously humping a glamorous woman in heels in a cramped airplane toilet (on Concorde, no less). The man is Rupert Campbell-Black (played by actor Alex Hassell), and this enthusiastic bonking kicks off within the first 10 seconds of the Disney+ show Rivals.
In case you’re not familiar, the 1980s-set drama is based on the second book in Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles. The action revolves around a TV network and, more specifically, the rivalry between Campbell-Black and the head of Corinium television, Lord Tony Baddingham (played by David Tennant). The likes of Aidan Turner, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer also star – and there’s back-stabbing, Champagne-sloshing and, well, rather a lot of sex.
Having talked to almost all my female friends about the series, all of them have said the same thing: “Wow, there’s a lot of sex in it, don’t you think?” And then, there’s an awkward silence. Why? Because, while there is indeed a lot of sex in the show (it was the 1980s, after all), there seems to be far less of it in our own lives now.
These days, you’ll be hard pressed to find many women who report that they’re working hard at the sex coal face. We’re busy, right? We have to hold down jobs, bring up children, stay healthy, get our eyebrows threaded, read books, watch content, share content, have friends, make food, tidy the house… where is the actual time?
Sex calls for spontaneity, for dropping your guard, for a dab of hedonism, for letting your wild side take over for a while. But so many of us have overflowing diaries, are glued to our phones and are trying to navigate 17 different WhatsApp channels (when your kids are at school, this becomes a full-time job). None of these things are sexy.
There are so many reasons my own sex life has dried up. I have two young kids and (still) haven’t fully recovered from birthing babies (my pelvic floor doesn’t feel entirely right). A lot of my friends are unhappy with their bodies after scrolling through hours of perfect influencers on Instagram (I love Davina but don’t have the time to invest in cultivating her “perfect” body).
Jilly Cooper herself said in an interview recently that people are having less sex than they did in the 1980s because they’re out running instead. As an avid runner I’d say that, yes, most people I know are running a lot, and perhaps some of this energy could be channeled into sex instead. We’re far more aware of our health these days; we want to live longer and perhaps some of us have also gone sober because we dread the hangovers.
We also love our comfort. We like our fleecy pyjamas; our memory foam slippers that have arch support and feel like we’re walking on clouds; our L-shaped sofas that mean we can raise these self-same tired feet off the ground. We much prefer watching sex to actually having it, don’t we?
I once had sex in a van parked up at Homebase; in a student halls of residence; in a car park. I was far more adventurous and not married to my memory foam slippers. It was spontaneous because I didn’t have a lot of other stuff to do – or at least, it felt that way. Most of it was fun, some of it less so (I wasn’t confident enough to say what I wanted and definitely slept with men that I didn’t like).
Much of the sex in Rivals showcases characters who are overcome with sensuality and are living in the moment. There’s also a fearlessness that we lack these days because we overthink so much. But if we drill down into the reality of the show, we can also see that the marriages aren’t very happy. The men have enormous egos, which go unchecked most of the time. In that classic first scene in the plane, I wondered whether the woman in the toilet was really having fun? Or was she faking it? In the 1980s, women were probably more likely to lie back and think of England than tell a man what they wanted.
Interestingly, many of the women I talk to (I used to host a podcast about sex) are having sex, but it’s with themselves rather than a partner. “It’s so much easier,” one of my close friends said when she admitted that she liked to nip upstairs when she has a spare 15 minutes and masturbate, “and I’m all done in five minutes and am refreshed for the school run.” Could it be that sex has become the less convenient, more uncomfortable option?
The fact is that sex requires risk and making an effort. It also requires energy, unless you’re going to bring nothing to the sexual table. By the time the fourth episode of Rivals has wrapped up, it’s 10pm and I’m knackered. I still need to cleanse my face, tone, put a serum on, eye cream, face cream and neck cream (whomever invented elaborate skincare routines clearly didn’t like sex). I pull on my cosy dressing gown and shuffle up the stairs in my prized memory foam slippers. It’s not sexy, but I’ll get round to sexy another day. I have the rest of this TV series to finish watching first.
Rivals is available to stream on Disney+.
