Rivals’ Rutshire – a place where modern Britain’s brutal divisions disappear in a cloud of sex | Jess Cartner-Morley

As the second series of the Jilly Cooper adaptation climaxes, we can be thankful that quality TV doesn’t always have to be bleak and stressful For Jilly Cooper devotees – a motley band that unites me with Queen Camilla and Joanna Lumley, Ian Rankin and ex-footballer Tony Adams – it has been the best of times, and the worst of times. (No apologies for the clunky Tale of Two Cities misquote. Jilly was fond of gleefully shoehorning in the odd bit of Dickens, or Shakespeare, or Wordsworth.) The b...

By Jess Cartner-Morley