Rivals star Aidan Turner says viewers don't need a gentle warning before watching Disney's new raunchy period drama and admits fans of the best-selling book will be "proud" of the small screen adaptation.
Based on Jilly Cooper's much-loved 1988 novel, the highly-anticipated adaptation of Rivals is set to light up screens from 18 October.
Written by EastEnders' Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the steamy eight-part series centres on the fictional English county of Rutshire, and follows the story of Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and Lord Baddingham's (David Tennant) rivalry that begins to affect the day-to-day operations of a TV network.
The synopsis of the drama hails the show as being "full of romantic entanglements, dastardly deals, sex and wit" but Aidan Turner, who plays TV presenter Declan O'Hara, reckons "even if you are prudish, I think you'll be into this show".
"Yeah, I'm a sucker for that stuff. I'm a total geek for cameras and that kind of thing," he said.
"It's amazing really but they are really difficult to work, and they are balanced with magnets, and you have to recentre. Usually, we'd have supporting artists to be the camera guy, but we had the actual engineers to do the thing.
"We used the footage from the cameras, so it looks so authentic. When I looked back on playback it transports you there immediately.
"There were lots of those great details that we had the capacity to deliver that might not exist on shows as big as this," he added.
About a Boy star Victoria Smurfit delivers a standout performance as Turner's self-absorbed and limelight-loving wife Maud O'Hara, who is willing to do whatever needs to be done to ensure her light is never dimmed.
"The idea that we're bringing the Jilly Cooper-verse to an audience, it was oddly easy!
"Everybody just got the tone. It was like a weird magician alchemy where everyone just got on and you just got in the room and flew," she said.
Poking fun at the show's steamier scenes, Smurfit said: "If you can't eat a full meal, go and sit down over there!
She added: "If you don't like laughing, crying, your jaw on the floor, being kind of jealous of some of the lives of these creatures. It's just a full package of passion and pain and it's delicious!"
Naturally, adapting a popular book for a big screen outing is always going to come with its challenges, but Turner admits that the cast knew "very early that they were making something kind of cool".
"I mean you always want the fans to be happy with the show," he said. "You want it to feel authentic and that it's true to the book that they remember and the story that they love.
"I think we knew very early that they were making something kind of cool and that it's working, and they will be proud.
"We didn't get to see rushes or anything like that early, but we just got a sense and a feeling of it. We knew from the get-go that they were going to be happy and proud of it."
Known for being the life and soul of the party, it's hardly surprising that 87-year-old Cooper invited the cast to a soirée in her Cotswolds home to take a well-deserved break from set.
"It was the most extraordinary experience - the bunch of us, us reprobates - in a big coach trying to get down these narrow lanes in the Cotswolds and you arrive at this magnificent English house with a big garden," Smurfit recalls.
"It was sort of surreal because she was able to say 'Oh, this is where I write' and show us all of the different houses. You could see her world in real-time.
"Then you have Jilly who is like Paddington Bear with a dirty glint in her eye wandering around her own garden with this magnificent joy and she was so happy and flirty and cheeky and fun. There's no light diminished in that woman whatsoever. And then there was wine.....lots of wine!"
The stellar cast line-up also includes David Tennant, Alex Hassell, Luke Pasqualino, Danny Dyer, Katherine Parkinson, Bella Maclean, and Nafessa Williams.
Lavishing praise at her hardworking co-stars, Smurfit said: "Everybody without a shadow of a doubt took the work really seriously, and themselves, not at all".
She added: "It made for a mess of support and carnage. It was just so much fun. You couldn't fail in a funny kind of way because no matter how far anybody went, you couldn't go far enough.
"Everybody is delicious and ridiculous and disgustingly talented. It was a real pleasure to be part of it."
Rivals is mainly directed by BAFTA-nominated Elliot Hegarty, while Dee Koppang O'Leary and Alexandra Brodski also direct some episodes and author Cooper is an executive producer on the series.
The show is based on the second book of Jilly's Rutshire Chronicles, which started with Riders in 1986, and now consists of 11 novels.
All episodes of Rivals will launch on 18 October on Disney+.
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