‘Rivals’ Season 2 Turns James Vereker’s Comic Chaos Into Something Far More Sinister

Oliver Chris has always been one of ‘Rivals’ most entertaining presences, but according to the actor himself, James Vereker’s crowd-pleasing antics are about to carry a much heavier cost in the show’s second season.

Speaking in a video shared by Film Updates on X, Chris offered a candid breakdown of his character’s shifting role between the two series. In his own words, James in the first series occupies a “ghastly, vain, self-obsessed, emotionally careless” comic space, one that the show played beautifully for laughs.

In season two, however, those same traits stop being funny and begin leaving real damage in their wake, with Chris noting that the effects of James’s disregard on those around him lead to “really unpleasant consequences.”

James Vereker’s arc picks up with Sarah Stratton, played by Emily Atack, now sharing the Corinium screen with him following her season one breakthrough, though an unplanned pregnancy threatens to unravel both her career and her marriage. It is precisely the kind of messy fallout that Chris’s comments foreshadow, a world where James’s self-absorption no longer just bounces off everyone harmlessly but actively distorts the lives around him.

Critics who have seen early episodes have largely echoed this shift in tone, with reviewers noting that season two is noticeably darker and trades some of the first run’s frothy energy for a more sustained examination of how bitter competition corrodes real people. Where season one introduced audiences to the gleaming, absurd surface of Rutshire, the follow-up appears far more interested in what lies underneath.

Beyond the melodrama and its signature irreverence, the new season expands its world to spotlight secondary characters who were previously sidelined, with women like Sarah Stratton and Lady Monica Baddingham now among the most compelling figures as they navigate the misogyny baked into both their professional and domestic lives.

The twelve-episode season is being released in two six-episode batches, an expansion from season one’s eight-episode run. The series, set in the 1980s Cotswolds where the local television industry is treated as serious business, adapts Dame Jilly Cooper’s novel of the same name from her Rutshire Chronicles series.

Chris and co-star Emily Atack have spoken warmly about returning to the production, with Atack describing the cast reunion as a genuine highlight and Chris saying it meant getting to “live in Jilly Cooper world again.” Given the weight being loaded onto James’s shoulders this time around, that world is proving far more complicated than anyone in Rutshire might care to admit.

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