The following contains spoilers for the first four episodes of Rivals season 2.The first season of Rivals rightfully generated a lot of buzz for its scandalous sensibilities — the series opens with a couple joining the Mile High Club in an airplane toilet as a champagne bottle overflows outside and pretty much just proceeds from there. It was full of attractive male leads, most of whom all took their shirts off at various points during its run. It unabashedly embraced the idea that television is — and should be — fun. Now the buzzy bonkbuster is back for another round, and, to be clear, Rivals season 2 is still full of all the elements that made its first so entertaining. There’s sex, booze, betrayal, petty jealousy, and outstanding 1980s needle drops. (Not to mention a glorious array of outsize shoulder pads.)But while the show’s second outing is no less titillating, it is a bit more serious, adding some necessary emotional depth to every major character and complicating pretty much every narrative arc. But what’s most satisfying about Rivals season 2 is the way it moves beyond the idea of simply being a gleefully naughty show featuring hot men. And it does so by very purposefully putting its female characters in the spotlight. “We had a very female writer’s room. We are very female in the way we often think,” showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins laughingly tells Den of Geek. “We ran a show called EastEnders for a very long time here that was really a show that is all about the women. And we’ve brought that sensibility to Rivals. It’s in the book as well, of course. But really, we’ve spent a lot of time through seasons 1 and 2 talking about the female gaze, and the camera thinking from the female point of view. I think remarkably few shows do that.” cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Rivals has always had a particularly feminine sensibility, from its focus on emotional arcs to its overt love of romance. But this season, the women of Rutshire get to drive the story on their own terms. “I think in season 1, loads of things happen at the end, which gave us some great hooks to let these women step forward, but it’s really all about the consequences of people’s choices,” executive producer Alexander Lamb says. “Tony’s behavior impacts Monica, which brings Monica to the floor and she gets great scenes like that moment in the first episode when she tells Tony he’s embarrassed himself and that won’t be happening again. Maud and Declan. He told her he watched her play, but he didn’t. It doesn’t matter how hot you are; get out. You feel for them, like you’re with Lizzie when she’s trying to be a good person, thinking she shouldn’t be having an affair. You root for all of them.”Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Dame Jilly Cooper’s novels, which give their female characters free rein to be as selfish and driven by their own desires (physical or otherwise) as the men around them. “The women are just as integral to the story as the men, you know,” Victoria Smurfit, who plays Maud O’Hara, says. “A woman wrote it originally. I think it’s very exciting that they put a lot of the women front and center, but it is all there in the book already. And when you read a lot of Jilly [Cooper’s] stuff, all the men are sexy and cool and fabulous and powerful, and all the women are sexy and naughty, but they’re equally driven by their wants, no matter what those looked like. And the way Dominic Trevor Collins and Laura Wade write it — with Jilly’s blessing — is with an eyeball to to now, to see it through the lens of what’s going on now without it being too disparate from what we understand. It’s equal opportunity for all of us.”While almost every major female character gets her chance to shine in season 2, it is Sarah Stratton, the trophy mistress-turned-wife of a Tory politician who longs for a TV career of her own that completely steals the show. In season 1, her story largely revolved around her sex life, namely an ill-advised affair with playboy Rupert Campbell-Black. But in Rivals’ second outing, Sarah’s arc gets much more complicated as she attempts to juggle her marriage, growing career, and a surprise pregnancy. “I’m so lucky because I’ve always wanted to take a character like this and make them so that people want to root for them rather than [tamp] them down in the name of making them likeable,” Emily Atack, who plays Sarah, says. “She makes these terrible decisions. She can be quite conniving and manipulative. She uses her sexuality. She will do anything to get the things that she wants. But I think the more you look into Sarah, the more you understand those behaviors a little more, and understand that she does it because she’s trying to survive in a male-dominated world. She wants more, and this is the path that is open to her.”Atack finds a tremendous amount of sympathy in Sarah’s journey, acknowledging her flaws as she struggles to hold her rapidly spiraling life together. (She’s also, not for nothing, a gifted comedian, and gets many of the season’s funniest moments.) “I wanted people to identify with Sarah,” she says. “I owe it to women out there who are complicated and who are like me. I really want to do them a service, and I want them to love Sarah and root for her. And know that it’s okay to identify with her. We’re all flawed. We all make terrible decisions. I think I wanted to show that doesn’t make you evil. I wanted her vulnerability to come through. In the first [season], she’s a bit colder. But in season 2, they wrote all these brilliant storylines for her to show why he is the way she is and why she’s doing what she’s doing.”In a lesser show, a character like Atack’s Sarah would likely be little more than a caricature, a fact that her co-star, Chris Oliver, who plays Sarah’s pompous yet strangely insecure Corinthian chat show co-host James Vereker, is quick to point out. “Characters like [Sarah] could be so one-dimensional,” he says. “But in season 1, you get to see this really ambitious, clever woman, only things just don’t work out how she hoped. And in season 2, you can see really clearly, how she’s dealing with the fallout from those decisions, and there’s such pathos and humor and drive in her actions.”For Oliver, one of the most interesting aspects of Rivals is its ability to look at its 1980s setting and characters through a modern lens, and the ways that perspective can still reflect the present we’re all living in now. “The show is set in the 1980s…it’s a time that’s not too long ago, so you can still relate to it, and have some fun with the crassness and the naughtiness and all that,” he says. “But we’re also able to really look at how things were back then. It begs the question: How far have we come with certain things? Are things changing? I think in season 1, James was a kind of comic relief. But in season 2, I think we see how his disregard for other people’s emotions actually affects them. When I saw it back for the first time, I was actually really affected by it because you realize that actually I am representing a kind of passive, careless, toxic masculinity in this story, which was not only relevant in the 80s, but I think is probably still quite relevant today.”The first four episodes of Rivals season 2 are available to stream on Hulu and Disney+ now.The post Rivals Season 2 Puts Its Female Characters Front and Center appeared first on Den of Geek.