Victoria Smurfit pushes Rivals Episode 4 into filthier, frolicsome territory
rivals episode 4 arrives with Victoria Smurfit calling the second series of Rivals “more filthy and frolicsome” than ever. The Disney+ drama is back on screens, and the show’s return pushes its 1980s-set world of Rutshire, country estates and status games back into view.
Smurfit on Maud O'Hara
Victoria Smurfit, who plays Maud O'Hara, said, “If I could tell 14-year-old me that one day I'd be playing Maud and I'd be married to Declan, I think I would not have been able to compute that idea,” a line that neatly captures how far the role reaches beyond a simple costume-drama slot. Maud is a former actress, married to a journalist-turned-chat show-host hired by Lord Tony Baddingham, and she arrives in the Cotswolds with three children.
Smurfit also said she sees Maud through a sharper lens: “I think like every decent woman, you should be some part devilment and some part whiskey and it just depends on what level we're going to be at.” That mix fits a character built from bohemian spirit and vulnerability, with the sort of moral messiness Cooper’s books trade in rather than sanding it down.
Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles
Rivals is based on one of Dame Jilly Cooper's bonkbusters and was originally published in 1988, part of the Rutshire Chronicles that track English upper and upper-middle-class lives in a fictional Cotswolds setting. The story centers on the rivalry between Rupert Campbell-Black and TV executive Lord Tony Baddingham, which gives the series its engine even as the newer adaptation leans into ensemble chaos.
The cast includes David Tennant, Danny Dyer and Aidan Turner, who plays Declan O'Hara opposite Smurfit’s Maud. That pairing matters because the second series is not just another batch of episodes; it gives the adaptation more room to spread out around Rutshire and its residents without losing the social friction that made the books sell in the first place.
Series 2 gets broader
Smurfit said series 2 is “bigger, it's juicier, it's bolder, it's more outrageous,” and added, “Almost in every episode you'll get an outrageous ball or polo or something where everyone's together, but every character now gets an amazing arch to include the good, the bad and the ugly, which is unheard of really, so it's delicious,” which is the clearest signal that the show is widening rather than repeating itself. Her description points to an adaptation strategy built on more moving parts, not just louder ones.
That approach should matter to viewers who came for the tonal excess and stayed for the cast chemistry: the show is still trading on 1980s excess and large country estates, but the second series appears to be using its expanded ensemble to push the story beyond a single rivalry. For a book-to-screen series built on appetite, that is the smarter business move — more characters, more collisions, and more room for the outrage to land.
