We rate Elliot Hegarty’s willingness to let comic actors be broad and stay with a ridiculous joke. Rivals makes the case for that approach, even when its crowded plotting starts to wear.
Fi1m perspective
The naked tennis in Rivals (2024) is allowed to remain ridiculous for as long as the joke needs. We laughed because the scene does not hurry towards something more respectable. That confidence is worth looking for in Elliot Hegarty’s work, though here it belongs to a directing team. Alexandra Brodski, Jamie Jay Johnson and Dee Koppang O’Leary share the credit with him. The ensemble takes the nonsense seriously enough for it to work, without requiring us to take it seriously too.
There is a substantial stretch of comedy directing behind that assurance. His television work runs from Star Stories (2006) through 21 episodes of The Middle (2009), with sustained work in both British comedy and American sitcoms. With Jack Whitehall, he directed Bad Education (2012) and its 2015 film adaptation, taking a television collaboration into a feature. The move towards comedy-drama includes two episodes of Ted Lasso (2020) and two seasons of Cheaters (2022). That experience matters when considering a programme whose pleasures depend so heavily on actors working comfortably together.
Hegarty was lead director and executive producer on Rivals, so crediting the wider team need not mean understating his contribution. David Tennant and the ensemble make the indulgence worthwhile, and the direction gives them room to play broadly. We prefer this confidence to comedy that keeps signalling embarrassment about its own jokes. The sexual comedy is particularly well served by that freedom: it asks for commitment from the performers, and gets it.
The reservation is that Rivals sometimes gives us too much plotting to enjoy the company properly. We would prefer fewer complications and more space for the performers, though the crowded storytelling never quite exhausts the pleasure of watching them. Our enthusiasm for Hegarty rests on that comic assurance; the series gives us less reason to praise its pacing. Start with Rivals if an unabashedly adult soap appeals, and allow for stretches when keeping up with the plot becomes the evening’s less enjoyable task.
Fi1m
Biography
Elliot Hegarty is a British film and television director. He was born in London in 1971 and studied politics at Nottingham University before training at the NYU Film School and the London Film School.
Hegarty has directed episodes of Ted Lasso (2020) for Apple TV+ and served as lead director and executive producer on the first season of Rivals (2024) for Disney+. His other credits include Trying (2020), Lovesick (2014), Bad Education (2012), The Middle (2009), black-ish (2014) and the feature films The Bad Education Movie (2015) and County Kilburn (2000), which he also wrote.
He has received an International Emmy Award for Rivals and has been nominated for BAFTA Awards. He has also directed commercials and worked extensively in both British and American television.
