Frock'n'roll Rivals may be problematic, but it is also gloriously fun

It begins, of course, with bonking. A close-up on a bare male bottom, thrusting energetically in a Concorde loo. Cries of ecstasy float over a soundtrack of Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love, as the plane hits supersonic and the flight attendant pops the champagne. It can only be Jilly Cooper, and that bottom can only be Rupert Campbell-Black - champion showjumper, international heart-throb, Tory sports minister, braying toff, absolute shit.

- Jess Cartner-Morley

Lock up your remote, because Rivals - that most gloriously 1980s piece of doorstopper fiction, Blighty's answer to Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities - has landed on TV.

Full disclosure. I am a Jilly Cooper super fan. Dame Jilly is my heroine, and Rivals would be my Desert Island Discs book of choice. I took my daughter's name, Pearl, from one of her books. I actually applied to be an extra on this adaptation of Rivals. (Sadly it didn't work out.) In fact, I have written about Jilly before. When that article - more of a love letter - was published, she sent me a handwritten, two-page thank you note, addressed to "Darling, darling Jess" which is preserved as a treasure in my scrapbook, along with my wedding photos and my children's first drawings.

Cooper's novels have bottoms on the cover (Riders, an absolute peach in white jodhpurs) and exclamation marks in their titles (Jump!), and she is therefore belittled as a writer. Which is a travesty, because her emotional intelligence is second to none.

There is no one better on the worlds that exist within a marriage. No one sharper on the dynamics of a dinner party. No one more subtle at the show-not-tell of fiction, never telling you what to think, but creating characters who show you who they are by what they say and do. Much of what I know about life, I learned from Jilly. She is generous and wise, wrapping morality tales in a buttery pastry of sex and puns and parties. And she is hilarious, the queen of the delicious takedown.