Rivals has set audience pulses racing since its debut on Disney-plus in October. Set in the mid 1980s, in the ficticious Cotswold idyll of Cotchester, Rivals is the super-saucy new drama based on the 1988 novel by Jilly Cooper.
In it we come across a dastardly media mogul, a seemingly villainous politician (never!) and an ambitious television journalist, surrounded by a cast of grotesques – from newly minted social climbers to hardcore members of the country elite. It’s a lot, then, and all played out with the pre-requisite big hair, terrible fashion and high-gloss of the ’80s.
Underscoring the entertaining locking of horns, quaffing of champagne and endless rolls in the hay is original music by British composing team Natalie Holt and Jack Halama. Holt is the award-winning composer behind hit shows such as Disney’s Loki and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and she has teamed up with Halama to deliver what is a particularly operatic soundtrack for Rivals.
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Their music features solo turns from soprano Ellie Neate and tenor Ben Thapa, the talented singer (and member of vocal quartet G4) who sadly died in September.
Holt and Halama have their tongues firmly in their cheeks for Rivals, referencing or riffing on the odd familiar opera ditty (from Carmen to Samson and Deliliah) and leading us, and the characters, on a merry dance (from the Habeñera to the Tango).
We sat down with them both to discuss Rivals’ heady mix of Bizet, beats, bubbles and bonking.
This show is wild! What was your brief?
Jack: Obviously the Jilly Cooper universe exists as a huge thing that people know already. So the brief was to make something that tied together all the storylines, and the narrative, while giving it a really distinctive flavour.
Natalie: Yeah, they just really wanted a melodic hook that would carry through all the complicated stories that are going on, rather than character themes. They wanted a singular theme that carried through the whole show and drives everything.
Is there a pressure these days to create a memorable opening title theme?
Jack: Yes, and actually that’s the first thing we did, even before we knew if there was even going to be a title sequence. We wanted to establish a really strong hook/theme, so we actually wrote a 2-3 minute version of the track used on the opening titles. That was the first thing we gave to production, just to say, ‘this is our sound, this is our theme and we want to base the whole score around it.’ It ended up being the opening titles…
Natalie: And they weren’t going to have opening titles; they decided to have them because they loved the music so much, which was really fun.
There’s a very unsubtle operatic quality to the score; tell us about your approach there…
Natalie: We were basically thinking ‘what’s the musical version of an orgasm?!’ So that was our starting point.
Jack: Yeah, we just imagined a soprano doing a huge, high flourish, which is in the titles before the beat comes in. It’s a big, completely ludicrous flourish by the soprano.
Natalie: It was nice, having that concept of the musical orgasm. Jack and I then came up with the theme between us. We passed the idea around and came up with it on the piano; we wanted a real hook that would stick in your mind. It’s always good when you’ve got a solid hook, like an identity for the show.
It certainly works well with the largesse and grotesquerie of the characters!
Jack: Yeah, it’s a world of complete excess and there are no limits to the amount of sex, food and champagne. It’s got a larger-than-life attitude about it.
And what about the use of dance rhythms – there’s a bit of Habañera and Tango?
Natalie: Exactly! The Tango felt like the perfect push and pull between lovers, or people having an affair. Then we’ve got this orgasming opera singer over the top. But the Tango was a thought we had while we were brainstorming the concepts.
Jack: That push and pull is the reason why we chose to write predominantly for a female soprano and a male tenor. Sometimes they’re interlocking together, sometimes they’re really fighting against each other. Pretty much all of the tenor’s lyrics are in German and the soprano’s are in Italian. So it’s two people speaking different languages, not listening to each other. It’s almost like an argument; or a musical misunderstanding, I guess.
Natalie: We found out that Ben Thapa, who sang the tenor parts, passed away in September. That was really sad.
Jack: He was a lovely guy and unbelievably talented. We were blown away by him; he was instant with everything we gave him; one look at the score and he got it.
Natalie: And with such commitment; he gave it real character.
You mentioned not having character themes, but Rupert Campbell-Black– despite being one of the most brash – has the most emotional/introspective music?
Jack: Yeah, in terms of themes we have our main melody and the harmonies, but there are lots of different realisations of the theme. They’re either for different characters, situations or emotions, I guess. The director Elliot Hegarty was really keen on Rupert being very introspective and a bit lonely; he could easily come across as a vapid playboy that you don’t like, so the idea was to feel for him a bit. That’s why we’ve got what the producer always called the ‘sad bells’. It’s an ’80s synth version of the theme.
Tell us a bit about working together? This isn’t your first collaboration is it?
Natalie: We met through (composer) Martin Phipps, because I used to assist him and Ruth Barrett and Jack was working for them. I really needed to find a guitar player and Martin Phipps recommended Jack. We’re talking about 12 years ago!
Jack: Yeah, it has been years. I did some guitar stuff for Nat first, then I did some guitar and a bit of writing, and it slowly built from there. I think we have quite complementary styles; we’re not exactly the same, but there is crossover stylistically. We have a good relationship and can bounce stuff back and forth.
Natalie: It was really handy on this project, because if Jack was away I could go into the edit; it’s so nice to be able to split the job between two of us. If we’ve got other things on, it’s nice to share the workload on some of the meetings. There were three different directors and three different blocks of episodes.
Jack: It’s just really nice to have someone with you. When you’re by yourself in your little cave, it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole and lose sight of the bigger picture. Whereas when you’re collaborating with someone, your idea is formed, you send it to the other person and they might say, ‘it’s great, but I’m not sure about this, shall we try this?’ That takes it to another level and then I will do the same; you get a fresh pair of eyes on it at every stage. When you’re doing it by yourself, you’re doing it for hours and hours; after you’ve listened to something for 16 hours you can lose perspective.
Natalie: We were really lucky with this project, because we didn’t have the biggest budget! We only had enough for one recording session, actually, so we had that really early on and kind of made an album of material which wasn’t totally to picture. They cut it all in – there was no temp music on the show, because they loved the theme and we’d recorded all this material. It was an unusual way to work; we’d get the edit through and it already had our music on it.
Jack: That was so great, because it meant we didn’t have to water down our vision at all. The theme that you can hear on the opening titles, and used throughout the whole series in various guises, that’s pretty close to the one we gave them right at the beginning before we’d seen anything. Obviously it was later mixed and mastered, but that was our vision for the show. If we’d come in with that once they’d locked the episodes with a load of Dune (by Hans Zimmer) on it, or whatever, it’s much harder to give the show an identity and change it retrospectively. It meant we could give it a distinctive flavour right from the beginning. I think them not using temporary music made the result much stronger. Or at least much more distinct.
And you’ve put an album together of the music… can that be a bit of a challenge?
Natalie: It was quite difficult putting the album together, to work out which pieces to leave out. We had to write the theme for the Declan chat show as well, which was like really terrible saxophone samples, deliberately leaning into crap, low-fi ’80s TV theme tunes. That was fun to play around with.
Jack: We should have put that on the album as a hidden track.
Natalie: There are also a few things on the album that we recorded in the session that haven’t been used yet. But hopefully we’ll be getting a Season Two…
Jack: Legal disclaimer, we don’t know if there will be a Season Two yet!
Natalie: This season was the first half of the book and it was left on a bit of a cliffhanger. But judging by the reaction from people, they should get the satisfaction of the whole book. Hopefully…
Rivals is streaming now on Disney-plus and Hulu, and you can listen to Natalie and Jack’s original soundtrack album on Apple Music, on Spotify or wherever you enjoy your music.
