David Tennant is back as Tony Baddingham in the second season of Rivals, the Corinium TV boss who remains locked in the series’ central fight with Rupert Campbell-Black. The return sends Jilly Cooper’s adaptation back to the 1987 general election period, with the story once again leaning into its own glossy chaos.
The new run is being greeted as a tremendous second season, and Tennant’s Baddingham is still the sort of character who keeps the whole machine humming through menace and momentum. Rupert Everett summed him up bluntly: “The man is a loose cannon,” a line that fits the way the rivalry drives the drama and gives the series its edge.
Rivals was already set up as a gloriously knowing take on Cooper’s 80s bonkbuster, but the earlier season left the field in motion when Rupert Campbell-Black was last seen scampering into the night with Cameron Cook. That ending matters because it leaves the second season with both unfinished personal business and a political backdrop that is fixed in 1987, where ambition, vanity and loyalty all have somewhere to crash into one another.
That is also why Tennant’s Tony Baddingham remains central. He is not just another villain in a crowded cast; he is the Corinium boss whose rivalry with Campbell-Black gives the series its spine. The move back into the election year restores the pressure that made the first season snap, while the return of Baddingham suggests the show is doubling down on the character most capable of turning every room into a contest.
For viewers, the answer is simple enough: yes, David Tennant is still very much part of the engine, and yes, Rivals is heading straight back into the fight that made it work in the first place. With 1987 as the stage and Baddingham still at the center of the clash, the second season is not resetting the story — it is pressing harder on the rivalry that already defined it.
