SPOILERS Rivals Season 2 🥳

[Blossombunnyy]

On Disney in May 15th 2026

Who's excited?

I can't wait the trailer looks so good.

It IS of it’s time! Declan slaps Cameron round the face! And he gets bitten by her heroic lurcher for his trouble. It was written then. It’s not meant to be a blueprint for romantic relationships - even then, it wasn’t! It’s a fictional casual romp with goodies that have bad sides and baddies that have redeeming features.

Now Marcus Gilbert really is RCB in looks!

He's dead, poor guy Only 67

I think Declan and Cameron will end up together, unless they change the Patrick actor. And they are definitely making Maeve very unlikeable (I know she was horrid in the books, too, but I think it only needs a little push for Declan to see the light. It was on a knife edge in the book).

Maybe Mousie and Paul?

Completely agree. I had never read them - my mother always dismissed them as trash / rubbish. Read them after I’d seen Rivals season 1 (so RCB for me was always established as Alex Hassle and not a total head fuck like it is for my DSis) and I LOVED them. Yes there’s the sex…but I think the way they’ve been dismissed as “bonkbusters” is unfair. I think she writes beautifully - the way she describes the landscapes, gets you to invest in the characters, fall in love with the animals.

I adored Riders, really enjoyed Rivals and Polo and then got a bit stuck and didn’t finish TMTMHS - I think for me Ranaldini and the schoolgirls was a step too far and I wasn’t feeling it like the others…but going to give it another go as I’d like to read them all.

I was going through a very difficult time a couple of years ago and couldn’t settle to a book - or indeed anything. So it was particularly joyful to get sucked into Riders. So much so that I wrote to Jilly Cooper to tell her (via a question form on her website). A few weeks later I got a personal response back, such a lovely message. Felt really touched and then awfully sad that she died.

I wonder what they will do for subsequent seasons as many of the core cast only make fleeting appearances in later books. Though they have shown they aren't being completely faithful to the books so perhaps they'll still manage to keep Freddie, Lizzie etc. around.

Rannaldini definitely becomes the Tony Baddingham-like nemesis. Who would be cast in that role? Will David Tennant get written out? I wouldn't be surprised if they kept his character in the tv show.

I assume they'll keep Tony B to the end as it has to conclude with the awarding of the TV franchise.

I'd love to see this production team do The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous next, maybe mashed up with Score in the same way they've mashed up Rivals and Polo.

They are all on my library app. I don't get to the library much, so easier to read on my phone. I plan on going through them in audio book form at some stage.

Like Marigold was a softer Valerie, Jilly did recycle her characters. I always thought Flora (from Appasionata I think) was basically Caitlin transplanted into a new storyline and more rounded out. Likewise the older chap Flora ends up with basically appears again as salt of the earth northerner in the horse racing ones.

I always thought that Caitlin was based on Jilly’s own daughter in part. There’s a bit in Rivals where she goes off to boarding school and Taggie finds the needle of the record player stuck on Wham and a moth bashing against the window. This is almost exactly the same as what she wrote in The Common Years when her real life daughter goes off to school.

Wasn’t one of the stories in Lisa+co, a short version of Octavia?

Here we are
From Rivals

Going to bed that night, Taggie felt even worse. In Caitlin’s bedroom, she found a moth bashing against a window pane and the needle stuck in the middle of a Wham record, and she realized there was no one to leave the light on in the passage for any more, to ward off the ghosts and hobgoblins.

‘Oh please God,’ she prayed, ‘look after her, and don’t let boarding school curb her lovely merry nature.’

From the Common Years

I went into Emily’s room at midnight, and found the needle had stuck on the record of Fame and was still playing. The room looked so bare because all her ornaments are now in packing chests. The bed was stripped and a moth was bashing against the window pane. Even worse, there is no one anymore to leave a light on in the landing for, to ward off the nightmares and the hobgoblins. Oh please God make her safe, and don’t spoil her lovely merry nature.

I’ve read the books so many times I didn’t have to look hard to find the passages!

Yes, Kate’s Wedding. Although the characters are different, the setting is very similar.

There's Kate's Wedding in Lisa & Co which has couples going away for the weekend on a barge, but the set-up is slightly different as Kate discovers her bad-boy artist ex is part of the group.

I definitely had a crush on Nico Calvert from Hester, and adored the description of ghastly Julian wearing "a black shirt, white trousers and a pint of Aramis" 😂

That’s definitely the best of the stories in Lisa & Co @SydneyCarton

Those Lisa and Co stories are brilliant, she really sums up 70s/80s London. I always think she was unfairly labelled as a bonkbuster writer when she was so much more than that - her descriptions of the countryside in the older books in particular are beautiful and I've learn no end of poetry from reading her, comes in handy at pub quizzes!

When I read Polo I remember thinking that Perdita was very like Fenella (Tory's sister)

Given how popular the first part of this season appears to be I hope they announce season 3 renewal before the end of the year!

I’ve got a book of hers called The British in Love She goes through love from cradle to grave quoting her favourite poems and prose. It’s lovely.

Janey is breastfeeding a baby (whilst showing off her glorious suntanned shoulders) and has an older child who is unnamed. In Wicked, they have twins-Amber and Junior. Is that just a change for plot purposes of having them in the same year at school or are they supposed to have loads of children??

It amused me that the Jilly-like characters who breastfeed were always suntanned and simply heavenly, yet if they were a bit lefty (like Helen’s friend from baby group in Riders whose name escapes me), they were described as whipping out a ‘triangular grey tit’ at any given moment!

Billy and Janey have a son called Christy (Christopher) as well as the twins.

So if she’s breastfeeding the baby in Rivals, has another older child (as she can’t always come to the Venturer meetings because she busy with two children) and then the twins, presumably they have 4.

I think Christy is the older child and it’s one of the twins she’s breastfeeding in Rivals. Not absolutely sure though.

I think possibly Jilly retconned the
one breastfeeding baby in Rivals to become twins later.

Ah, fair enough-love a bit of retcon!

I thought this, but not sure why as Junior does absolutely nothing in Wicked except get mentioned as an idiot

In the book, Janey shows off more than her glorious, suntanned shoulders. Nobody (ie no men) mind her breastfeeding because of her glorious, tanned breasts.
And in another book, we're told Taggie's breasts stay firm and beautiful because they were "never battened onto by a baby".
(Mine aren't grey and triangular after feeding 2 children - perhaps I didn't whip them out enough.)