By TRH Entertainment Desk
Rivals Season 2 lands on Hulu and Disney+. Our review weighs Cooper legacy, and why critics call it TV’s most unapologetic guilty pleasure.
May 16, 2026 — Lord Tony Baddingham is alive. And he is furious.
When Rivals Season 1 ended its quietly explosive run on Disney+ and Hulu in late 2024, it left audiences with one of British television’s most satisfying cliffhangers: Tony (David Tennant), Rutshire’s wickedest media baron, crumpled on an office floor after Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams) brained him with a TV award in self-defence.
Now, Season 2 opens with Tony very much upright, unrepentant, and sharpening every available weapon for the most personal campaign of destruction of his career. Welcome back to Rutshire. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
Rivals Season 2 premiered on Hulu and Disney+ on May 15, 2026, with the first three of twelve episodes dropping simultaneously. The remaining episodes are releasing weekly, with the second six-episode batch arriving later in the year — a deliberate structural choice by Disney+ to extend the cultural conversation around one of its biggest international properties.
The early verdict from critics is emphatic. The show currently holds a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Metacritic aggregating a score of 88 — “Universal Acclaim” — based on nine critic reviews. One of television’s most addictive new franchises has returned, and by almost every account, it has arrived in even finer form.
What Is Rivals? The Jilly Cooper Universe Explained
For newcomers, a brief orientation. Rivals is based on Dame Jilly Cooper’s 1988 bestselling novel of the same name — the second book in her Rutshire Chronicles series, following Riders. Set in the fictional Cotswolds county of Rutshire, Cooper’s bonkbuster universe blends explicit sexual melodrama with sharp class satire, populated by aristocrats, television executives, Olympic equestrians, and a supporting cast of magnificently terrible people.
The television adaptation, produced by Happy Prince (part of ITV Studios) and showrun by Dominic Treadwell-Collins alongside Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade, premiered in October 2024 and became a sleeper hit before word of mouth transformed it into a genuine cultural phenomenon — earning Emmy and BAFTA recognition along the way. Season 2 expands the canvas from eight to twelve episodes, a signal of the studio confidence that now surrounds the property.
Tragically, Dame Jilly Cooper — who served as an executive producer on the series and had direct involvement in Season 2’s scripts — passed away in October 2025, before this season reached screens. As TechRadar noted, reviewing the first three episodes, Cooper’s influence is unmistakeable throughout: “Cooper has obvious involvement over every inch of these episodes, with the bulk of production happening before her death… Her input is clear, concise and has been carried off with aplomb.” Season 2 stands, in many respects, as the definitive tribute to a literary giant.
The Plot: Blood, Revenge, and a Television War
Season 2 picks up within weeks — sometimes within seconds — of Season 1’s finale. The rivalry between Tony’s Corinium Television and Rupert’s upstart Venturer network for the Central South West television franchise has entered its most dangerous phase yet. Tony, having survived Cameron’s assault, has shed every remaining pretence of civility and declared open war on everyone who crossed him: Rupert, Cameron, Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), and anyone foolish enough to stand in his path.
As Den of Geek described the central engine driving the season: “What follows is a deeply personal campaign to bring down Venturer and everyone connected to it, one that unspools across everything from programming meetings and posh dinners to polo matches and political races.”
Meanwhile, Rupert’s love life is in characteristic disarray. The kiss he shared with Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean) at Season 1’s close is immediately complicated when he chooses to protect the blood-soaked Cameron rather than pursue the woman he loves. The course of true love in Rutshire has never run smooth, and Season 2 is not about to change that.
Season 2 also draws extensively from Polo, the next novel in Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles, introducing new storylines and characters while weaving in threads that hint at a broader expanded universe — what TechRadar calls “the seedlings of the JCU (Jilly Cooper Universe) being sown.” Those paying attention will notice the groundwork being laid for future adaptations.
New Cast: Hayley Atwell, Rupert Everett, and a Bigger Ensemble
The returning core ensemble — Tennant, Hassell, Turner, Williams, Maclean, Katherine Parkinson, Danny Dyer, Victoria Smurfit, Claire Rushbrook, Oliver Chris, Lisa McGrillis, Emily Atack, and Rufus Jones — is supplemented this season by two significant additions.
Hayley Atwell joins as Helen Gordon, Rupert Campbell-Black’s formidable ex-wife — a role guaranteed to destabilise whatever tentative emotional equilibrium Rupert has managed to construct. Rupert Everett arrives as Malise Gordon, Helen’s new husband and, in a delicious twist, Rupert’s former show-jumping mentor. The personal and professional now collide in ways that push Hassell’s characterisation into genuinely moving new territory. Collider noted that the season “has gone deeper than even the novels have,” and the Atwell and Everett additions are central to that depth.
David Tennant’s son, Olive Tennant, also joins the ensemble, along with Bobby Lockwood, Eliot Salt, and Amanda Lawrence.
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The Critics Weigh In
The early critical consensus is not merely positive — it borders on euphoric.
Variety called it “utterly delicious television,” writing that “Season 2 has taken things up a notch with a tonally perfect and exceptional continuation of a truly scandalous series.”
Den of Geek called Rivals “TV’s most unapologetic guilty pleasure,” writing that the show “turns everything we loved about its first outing up to eleven and adds in even more complex character dynamics and relationship arcs.” The review argued that Season 2 is “deeply uninterested in lecturing its viewers about its characters’ (many, obvious) moral failings” — and frames that restraint as one of its greatest strengths.
Collider was equally effusive, calling it “far more than a guilty pleasure” and observing that “one thing that’s immediately evident when you start Rivals Season 2 is that the series is simply delivering more on all fronts. There are new sets, bigger hair, and scandal waiting around every corner.”
JoBlo placed Tony Baddingham alongside television’s immortal 1980s villains, writing that David Tennant “delivers the epitome of an 1980s antagonist… The closing moment of the premiere episode makes it easy to rank Tennant’s role alongside iconic 80s villains like J.R. Ewing and Alexis Colby.”
The People’s Movies praised the show’s tonal confidence, noting that Season 2 “feels more confident in its chaos as rivalries continue to surge full throttle, dropping viewers straight back into the drama, without losing the sharp wit that made the first season work.”
David Tennant: The Season’s Beating Black Heart
If there is one performance that has united every critic, it is David Tennant’s. The reviews describe a revelation: a beloved actor abandoning every residual trace of audience goodwill to play a villain of baroque, almost joyful ruthlessness.
“Tennant has never been so unlikable,” wrote The People’s Movies. “Tony Baddingham is not afraid to be the villain of everyone’s story. Setting out with the sole goal of ruining everyone at Venturer one by one, he seemingly will not rest until that mission is complete, whatever the consequence… Tennant succeeds here, making you feel active discomfort every time Tony is on screen.”
How and Where to Watch
Rivals Season 2 is streaming now on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally (UK, Australia, and most global markets). The first three episodes are available immediately, with further episodes releasing weekly. The season is structured in two batches of six, with the second six episodes arriving at an as-yet-unconfirmed date later in 2026. Season 1 remains available on both platforms for first-time viewers.
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