SPOLIER SPOILER
Forgive me, I haven’t read the whole thread so it may be that someone else has mentioned this….but did you catch the “secret” that Declan threw on the fire? Makes me think that S2 will head into Polo territory…maybe even giving us a S3?
I haven’t been on MN for years, but I do recall that one of my favourite ever threads was us trying to cast Rivals should it ever be filmed. Well, here we are…so my personal thoughts on this:
Rupert. Sorry, no. I can look beyond the lack of blond hair, but I don’t find this actor appealing at all. I think the part was written well & captured the essence of Rupert with dialogue etc, but at no point did I look at him and see RCB. I couldn’t make that work in my head. He’s a very good actor, but miscast, imo.
Taggie. Meh. But that’s inevitable. Taggie, as written, was not really human…at least, who has ever met a human like her? She was perfect - “an angel” as Jilly describes her in the cast of characters at the front of the book. Very difficult to translate to the screen without making us all reach for the puke bucket.
Maud. Perfect. I don’t agree that she’d been domesticated by Declan, btw - he was not that kind of man. She had aged out of her previous acting roles and was too vain to want to play middle aged parts. In the book she was pretty awful, but we understood that it was her insecurity that made her so.
Same with Cameron, the most insecure person in the whole book - and the most abused. Making her black was a stroke of genius - being a New Yorker in 80s Cotswolds was fish out of water enough, but a black one in the whitest part of the UK? It added another layer of vulnerability, I think. I don’t like the way they dressed her, though - she wasn’t an 80s dresser at all, she was ahead of her time in that respect and that doesn’t show.
Declan. Almost perfect but AT isn’t quite old enough to be the bleary-eyed, bone tired, slightly shabby Declan O’Hara imo, but he’s close. And so fucking sexy.
Tony. Well, DT can act any part he wants with total authenticity, so he pulls it off. Rufus Sewell would have been closer to JC’s Tony - who looked like a mafia hood by description.
James Verekar. Brilliant & spot on. And for those making the Partridge comparison, bear in mind that JV was created long before Coogan showed up.
Lizzie - Katherine Parkinson was inspired casting. Jilly always provides us with one everywoman character in amongst the nutters - in Riders it was Tory, in Rivals it’s Lizzie and in Polo it’s Daisy. Loved KP in this.
Freddie. I was a bit 😲 when I heard they’d cast Danny Dyer - but he was lovely in this. It worked.
Valerie. Nailed it - so funny. I was amazed they went so far as to film “Freddie’s lonely act” but mercifully we were spared her neatly clipped bush onscreen!
Monica. That actress is always brilliant and is here - but I think they’ve made Monica a bit too vulnerable. I don’t recall her giving a shit about what Tony got up to, so long as it didn’t scare the horses or dogs. She was written as a type rather than fully fleshed character & was quite minor in the book, so maybe the producers just did her a favour and gave her an actual personality, which is fair enough.
Caitlin. We haven’t seen her big storyline yet, which I won’t spoil for those who haven’t read the book, but the casting seems fine.
Sarah Stratton. Emily Atak is really watchable and funny, but Sarah in the book was a little less dynamic, I think. Cashmere bosomed rather than shoulder pads and stilettos, iirc, but whatever…Emily is more fun, so it works. And they’ve been really kind to Paul, whose midlife crisis was way more hilariously pathetic in the book.
I really, really appreciate how hard they’ve tried to get the essence of the novel, and Jilly Cooper in general, right. The wrong Rupe (imo) aside, they totally succeeded and I so enjoyed bingeing this. The “biblical heat of her burning bush” was such an affectionate nod towards Jilly (in cameo) and her incomparable prose - the writers know why we fans have loved these books and they don’t ever sneer at us for doing so. They love them too.
For those wondering about S2…there has to be one. You don’t leave a character bleeding out on the floor and not come back to finish the story. And I think the clue in the fireplace suggests Polo is coming. So maybe we need to discuss casting for that….Ricky, Chessie, Daisy, Perdita and swoon Luke. Ideas? 😂😂
(Sorry this was so long).