On a freezing November evening in the Cotswolds, the cameras were rolling again at Chavenage House near Tetbury in Gloucestershire as season two of Rivals shot a bonfire scene for the Disney Plus drama. The series, adapted from Jilly Cooper's bonkbuster, had already arrived with a prize in hand: its first season won the International Emmy Award for best drama before reporters reached the set.
That win matters because Rivals is no longer the new arrival. It is a returning hit, and the cast and crew were back on location with the confidence that comes from a first season that landed. The atmosphere outside the old house was stark and cold, but inside the production had been transformed into a 1980s TV company office, with Filofaxes, fax machines and VHS recorders setting the tone for the next chapter.
Danny Dyer, who is among the returning cast, said the one thing his grandchildren know him for is not his recent work but his moustache. “My grandchildren only know me as a moustached man, and that depresses me,” he said. He also joked about the cold, saying, “You got to put them heat pads in your trotters,” before adding, “I've got two double ones for me toes” and “and Long Johns obviously.”
Aidan Turner’s return to Chavenage carried a different kind of memory. He plays TV presenter Declan O'Hara in Rivals, but long before this production he had spent time at the same house through his role in Poldark. Turner said he had lived there in “a previous incarnation,” though the place felt new to him when he walked back in. “I don't think anyone knew until my first day shooting here and then word got around and they wondered if they'd made a mistake,” he said. “But actually, they've dressed it so differently I don't recognise it as the place I used to shoot in.”
He also recalled one piece of set dressing that had to go. Turner said he insisted that a Poldark shrine in the women's toilets be taken down because, in his words, “It was just a big picture of my face looking at everyone who went to the bathroom. It was a bit creepy.” A sign in the men's toilets, though, survived. “Poldark peed here,” he said. “That was quite funny, though. That got to stay.”
The tone on set suggests season two is leaning harder into the kind of excess that made the series work in the first place. David Tennant, who plays Lord Tony Baddingham, said the new run pushes his character further. “The characters are delicious, the stakes are so high and the scenarios we find ourselves in are so juicy,” he said. “I thought he was quite badly behaved in series one, but I do terrible things in series two. I mean really despicable.”
That combination of familiar faces, a reused location and a fresh batch of ugly behavior is exactly what gives Rivals momentum going into season two. The first season proved the adaptation could travel beyond its source material and still keep the swagger of Cooper's novel. Now the question is not whether the show can be noticed, but whether it can keep escalating without losing the wicked fun that made it break out in the first place.
