This is an edited version of a piece that appeared in Mamamia Out Loud's newsletter. Sign up, here .

Look, the last time we were this invested in a forbidden love story, there were ice skates involved.

And hard bodies, and a Russian accent, and two of the most impossibly beautiful boys to ever step in front of a camera.

And yet, here we are. Shipping a pair of quiet midlife Englishers, neither of whom look like they spend Saturday mornings at pilates.

Watch the trailer for Rivals Season 1. Post continues below.

Lizzie and Freddie of Rivals Season 2 are the most unlikely romantic heroes since Lizzie and Freddie of Rivals Season 1. And only four episodes in, this time the pair – married but not to each other – get a whole sex scene, boobs included, in a chlorine-scented, Jilly-Cooper-worthy swimming-pool "romp". Before guilt drives them apart again, obvs.

There are only two types of people. The people who "get" Rivals, and the ones who do not.

For those of us in the first camp, we have been waiting for the return of this flawless adaptation of Cooper's 11-book "bonkbuster" Rutshire Chronicles for 18 dreary months. And then, last Friday, the sun came out.

As it turns out, there are plenty of us. Rivals Season Two has gone straight to number one on Disney+, globally. It has a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 100. The UK Guardian's review called it "Beyond earthly praise", awarding it an appropriately ridiculous 10,000 stars.

Rivals will do that to you, because it is completely unlike everything else on TV. Yes, there's plenty of fun and froth in the market. There's Heated Rivalry's aforementioned hockey players, mega-shagging college students in Off Campus and Nicole Kidman's surely wearing a cardie on a windy beach somewhere. But none of it has quite the knowing tone, the relentless energy and the sunshiny beauty of Rivals.

Simply put, no other show on television is having quite such a good time.

Those who don't get Rivals say audiences were longing for a less-woke world. One where everyone is smoking and drinking and shagging with abandon, Tory MPs are heart-throbs and fancying 17-year-olds was allowed.

I say audiences were longing to be entertained. To get lost in a show without murders, lectures, or the ritual humiliations of reality TV. To sink into a series where every actor is nailing it, the script is perfection, the world-building is so potent you can taste the vol au vents and yes, people still look like human beings.

But somewhere, buried in all the eye-candy countryside and out-of-context penises, there's a beating human heart, and it belongs to Freddie and Lizzie, the will-they-won't-they-oops-they-did couple who ran away with Season 1, much to everyone's surprise. Including their own.

There may never have been more perfect casting, in any TV series, anywhere, ever, than Danny Dyer as Freddie Jones and Katherine Parkinson as Lizzie Vereker. Dyer is a British actor with a hard-man reputation and a real-life backstory of addiction and drama. Parkinson is a BAFTA-winner probably best-known to most as Jen from the IT Crowd. Neither were the obvious choices for romantic leads, both are flawless.

Every writer knows that giving your female protagonist an extra-marital affair is high-risk – the traditional thinking is that women don't like cheating, we don't reward it, we don't want to think about it too much. But Jilly Cooper knew better, and that not every marriage is worth protecting.

Midlife women are cheering for Lizzie because we know she is under-loved. We know her "ghastly", unfaithful husband, James doesn't value or respect her. That he doesn't much fancy her, or recognise her talent.

But we know that Freddie sees the woman she is.

And that Lizzie sees the man Freddie is, not the fortune he made, or the status he can buy. He tells her that he loved his wife Valerie when they married, but we know it was all swallowed up long ago by social ambition. He doesn't begrudge her for it. He just doesn't feel seen, either.

Freddie and Lizzie are in love. They can't help themselves. And yet, they can, because they are kind. So, a lot like the hot hockey players, that leaves them – and us – mostly yearning.

Listen to this episode of Mamamia Out Loud, where Holly chats more about Rivals. Post continues below.

For a finger-touch, a long-held breath, a secret smile.

And a story that makes us feel things without ripping out our hearts.

All hail Rivals, a TV show as close to perfection as an English summer afternoon orgasm in Freddie's new pool.

This is an edited version of a piece that appeared in Mamamia Out Loud's newsletter. Sign up, here .

Feature image: Disney+.