Spoilers for Rivals season 2 episode 4 ahead.
Now that I’ve binged Rivals season 2 episode 4, I cannot stop thinking about the fact that I’ve seen a close-up of Danny Dyer’s bare backside.
Nor can I believe that Freddie (Dyer) has been dumped by ideal other woman Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson), or that Declan’s (Aiden) actress wife Maud (Victoria Smuriff) is set to have an affair with rival TV exec Tony Baddingham (David Tennant).
However, none of this is what I want to explore further… because I think the most important moment in the episode will be entirely missed.
While all of the above is happening in this week’s outing of the hit Hulu and Disney+ show, Tony poached Maud to star in a televised production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Most of our ensemble cast was in the audience, including Tony’s diligent yet neglected wife Monica (Claire Rushbrook).
After catching Lizzie at the show’s afterparty with sopping wet hair following her swimming pool tryst with Freddie, Monica is approached by Dame Enid Spink (Selina Griffiths), who is on Corinium’s executive board.
What happens next hints at the show’s first lesbian romance forming before our eyes — but if I’m honest, it’s not good enough for me.
‘It’s beautifully written and really subtle… the hints are there’
“Between you and me, I thought your Titania at school was far more exciting,” Enid is seen telling Monica. “That was a long time ago,” Monica responds, to which Enid says, “I remember.” The two lock eyes with each other as the cameras linger on them, and the sapphic tension is ridiculously palpable.
According to writer Laura Wade, this is all on purpose. “We’ve got Dame Enid and Monica this series, where there’s a beautiful twinkle going on between them,” she tells me.
“Monica was straight in the book, Monica, but it’s hinted in later books that later in life she was gay, or that she was fulfilling herself later on. So we’ve used that here.
She continues, “I think it’s been really beautifully written, and it’s really subtle. There are hints there. They never explicitly talk about the love they have for each other, but it was something they had at school. It’s all sort of looks and the odd cloaked bit of dialogue in language.
“It’s very tender, really beautiful. They’ve got each other’s backs in the story, which is really nice.”
But here’s my issue: Rivals is a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster where everybody’s at it. All the straight couple have funny, explicit and frequent sex scenes, while the show’s only openly gay couple — Charles Fairburn (Gary Lamont) and Gerald Middleton (Hubert Burton) — get the same treatment.
Yet the women have to settle for “stolen looks,” and that doesn’t sit right with me. Sure, introducing Monica and Enid as a fully-blown lesbian romance isn’t canon to Cooper’s original books, but we can have a bit of creative licence here. The beloved author certainly wasn’t a prude or exclusionary, put it that way.
If you’re a fellow LGBTQIA+ woman left feeling dissatisfied with this, don’t worry. During our interview, I asked Wade point-blank for more outright sapphic representation onscreen. Her response? “We’ll find you some more lesbians in the future, though.”
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jasmine.valentine@futurenet.com (Jasmine Valentine)
