Will they, won’t they? Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean)
Robert Viglasky Photography
Straight off the starting blocks, a beautiful blonde with Farah Fawcett flicks, impeccably glossed lips and an enviable golden tan counts down to the broadcast of Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack) and journalist Beattie Johnson’s new show ‘Uncensored’. They are a vision of riotous, high-glamour 80s with shoulder pads and big hair. ‘Tonight we’ll tell you the stories they don’t want you to hear,’ Atack whispers oh-so-seductively, who lest we forget, we were first introduced to playing naked tennis in the first season.
It’s a great pleasure to be reunited with electronics millionaire Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer) who has snapped up the megaest of mega-mansions in Rutshire which him and wife Valerie – social ambition incarnate – call ‘Bella Vista’. This, Valerie aptly reminds us, stands for ‘Lovely View’. Later, she tells some grand visitors that their socially incompetent son is off to Eton. ‘How did he do that? Has Freddie bought them a new computer block?’ they scoff.
The social-skewering is back, the lust is back and those beloved characters have thankfully all returned. There’s some new ones too: brilliant Hayley Atwell joins the cast as Rupert’s American first-wife Helen – as glamorous as she is fierce – and her husband, Rupert’s former chef d’équipe, Malise Gordon (Rupert Everett) making his entrance on a chestnut mare. There are moments that will make you hoot with laughter and others where you’ll be blinking back tears, such is the potency of this series.
Trouble in paradise: Maud and Declan O’Hara (played by Victoria Smurfit and Aiden Turner)
Robert Viglasky Photography
While we had a whiff of the Rutshire Chronicles equestrian action in the first series, it ramps up in a big way this time round with the glorious introduction of polo. Oh, yes. Some suitably glamorous ‘heavenly’ polo-playing twins roll up. ‘They only let beautiful people play polo,’ Freddie perceptively observes. We first see these polo players frolicking at the Jones’ pool party, where, rightly or wrongly, the Venturer business meeting takes place in the jacuzzi. It later descends into full-throttle skinny-dipping – resolutely against Valerie Jones’ pool-hygiene etiquette. The match is a riot of shirtless, horse-fuelled action, with polo sticks being twizzled like cheerleaders’ batons and Rupert Campbell-Black securing the winning goal to a soundtrack of Valerie Jones hollering, ‘go on Fred Fred!’ (since he is the wealthy patron – pronounced ‘pa-tron’ – of the ‘Jones’ Jets’ team).