Parker Lewis Soon after I watched House of Cards all those years ago, I got my hands on the book on which it was based. The book was an amazing read but it ended with the demise (quite literally) of the anti-hero Prime Minister Francis Urquhart (FU). This was different to the British TV adaptation where FU survived and climbed the greasy pole to become Prime Minister.This is where things can be a bit disjointed. The book "To Play the King" followed not from the book "House of Cards", but from the TV series, and continued with the political adventures of FU but at the end of the book FU came out second best to the King.The sequel TV series "To Play the King" continued with the adventures of FU but at the end he trumped the King, unlike the book.So you can imagine the disjoint here. Well the third book "The Final Cut" had FU continuing as Prime Minister.I think the author Michael Dobbs rewrote the three books in line with the TV series.

miss_lady_ice-853-608700 Almost twenty-five years on, House of Cards stands up well today. Thatcher has just left the government (which coincidentally happened just after episode 1 was screened) and likable if bland Henry Collingridge (David Lyon) has won the coveted Prime Minister job. Waiting in the wings is Chief Whip (the person who informs all the MP's of the party's policy and what vote they should cast on key issues) Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson). Though Urquhart seems old-fashioned and mild-mannered, like Iago he follows his master to serve his turn upon him. But Urquhart holds all the cards, knowing everything and everyone. He plots his ascent to the Prime Minister.Although it looks a bit stuffy and dated, this is thrilling stuff. The two-facedness of politics rings true today, as does the scandal (for example, one MP claims expenses for his coke habit). As others have noted, it has a Shakespearean tone to it. Urquhart is a modern day Richard III.The parallel is reflected in the affair Urquhart embarks on with ambitious young journalist/modern-day Lady Anne Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker, immediately recognisable to Pride and Prejudice fans as Jane Bennett). Mattie yearns to know what's going on behind closed doors and Urquhart realises that it would be handy to have a journalist on board. They begin a partnership that soon turns into...well, a partnership. The audience collectively gasp in horror at Mattie's fetish for him (as with Richard III, Urquhart is relatively unbothered by her- though even he is shocked at Mattie's overt Electra complex).Mattie may seem terribly weak to modern viewers as she repeatedly fails to see Urquhart's involvement in the scandals but she is blinded by her love of power. Urquhart fulfils both her fetish and desire for power. Also, as an intelligent man who would probably do a good job of ruling the country if he wasn't such a snake-in-the-grass, Mattie sees him as the last bit of hope for the government. It's a tough role but Harker bravely takes it on, showing Mattie as both strong and naive. Such complexities are what make interesting female characters.Of course as the actor with the plum role, Richardson is the star. He craftily does Shakespearean asides to the audience, which draws us into his scheming. Without these little winks, it just becomes the tale of a very unpleasant man. Richardson brings out the seductive appeal of Urquhart; an unlikely seductive figure as he looks about sixty and how we expect 'old boy' politicians to look. What is perversely seductive about Urquhart is his amorality and his power. Mattie is a necessary character because she serves to emphasise the aphrodisiacal nature of power. Though the male characters don't see it quite as an aphrodisiac, they let their guard down around it.I have not watched the U.S House of Cards yet but the original is the perfect length: four sixty-minute episodes. It's long enough for us to get a taste of Urquhart's evil without having to explain anything. Of course, with any show that relies upon evil plotting, suspension of disbelief is required. Richardson's ability to play Urquhart as 'normal' with an insidious desire for evil makes him more plausible than playing Urquhart as being Mr Lovely to the outside world and Mr Villain to the audience. We can believe such vile people exist in the government, confirming our distrust of politics.Where I worry about the U.S version is in its length. The longer you show us an evil figure, the more you have to explain things. We can enjoy four hours of someone being vile and despicable but to spend thirteen hours in their company, there's going to need to be a reason why they're like this. As soon as you start getting into character background, you remove the mystery- hence why at the end of Othello, Shakesspeare chooses to have Iago refuse to say another word (and keep to his promise) once he is confronted about his crimes.House of Cards is a pacy political thriller that feels like a sneaky backstage look into parliament and its workings. There's enough politics for it to be believable but not so much that it overwhelms the viewer. Mainly this is a tale of power and why people are so enthralled by it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU An absolute masterpiece in political philandering. Politics is poison. Politics is perversion. Politics is treacherous intercourse between any man and any other person, any woman and any other human with only one objective: to seize power, to retain power, to "make history" as if they could, not understanding that power is illusive and evasive, and history is not made by anything or anybody because history is and nothing else. What makes it is unknown of everybody. Big Ben here is only to dictate the time of the beginning of each episode, 9:22 a.m. The general idea is that a plain apparatchik of the conservative party manages to push aside the successor to Margaret Thatcher, the longest- serving peace time Prime Minister, who was too weak for the job, and he becomes nothing but the brute of the job who uses young women to get his inspiration, kills them as soon as they could become dangerous, and is in fact entirely manipulated by his own wife, a new Lady Macbeth who even manages to make him confront the new king and force him to abdicate. What's the best part of it is that it is thrilling to follow the actions of this apprentice sorcerer and to see how he manages any situation to his own advantage and yet is heading right into the wall because to succeed too long becomes dangerous for your own health in the British system where only the sovereign can last long because he or she is not supposed to play politics. It is thrilling because we know the only end can be his failure when the wall of success will become so hard that he will have to be eliminated for the simple survival of the political system.Yet you will learn only in the very last scene who the manipulator of it all is and what his or/and her intention is too. And it is true the series is intelligent enough and well enough done that you cannot know who that manipulator is though we see his/her black gloves at crucial moments but the episode systematically mislead you to believing it (he/she) is someone else.The series is also a very good criticism of British democracy based on the free press that is as free as a tornado in a narrow and deep gorge between two very high mountains. The press is in fact on a very short leash: make money with news and make the news if necessary to make money, like Citizen Kane used to say. Parliament is an amazing maze of corridors and staircases, a comfortable bar and a House of Commons with only one interesting session, Questions to the Prime Minister, every week or maybe more often. This Parliament is a farce in many ways, at best a circus for gladiators who have no right to kill one another but who can bruise their own and respective egos in all possible ways.It is so easy to make the public believe what you want them to believe when you can pull the strings that hold the press. And then you can always manage someone to get killed here and there, now and then, who is embarrassing or annoying the big masters.I am so glad I am not engulfed in such an ugly activity. And yet I am sorry everyday because of them because they terrorize my own life all the time with their own caprices and incompetence. After that you sure will loathe politics, or at best want to be one of the few who can control the game.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

jc-osms I somehow missed this series on its first BBC broadcast well over 20 years ago but went looking for it after seeing the recent David Fincher / Kevin Spacey Americanised remake, which I had much enjoyed. Looked at today, I'd have to say I prefer the remake. In my opinion, the poisonous mix of sex, politics and power plays better against the backdrop of the more open and ruthless brand of politics across the water than staid old Britain. Unlike Spacey, Ian Richardson as the reptilian villain of the piece exudes no sex-appeal whatsoever, so that you get no sense of a physical attraction between him and the young female investigative reporter (Susanne Harker), indeed there are almost no bedroom scenes of the couple to hammer home this point.I also found the plot-lines just too fanciful and unbelievable, Richardson's Francis Urquhart character's stop-at-nothing persona taking the cliché of the utterly selfish and self-deluding politician's ambition a bit too far. Yes, there are identifiable types in the background characters, but that's all they are, ciphers more than characters. As a for instance, the American series builds up the background character of Urquhart's wife more effectively than here, while complicit in her husband's rise up the ranks, she too is a shadowy, unsubstantial figure, another wasted opportunity. The only person we're interested in is Urquhart and besides himself the only people he appears interested in are we the viewer, as he breaks the fourth wall and speaks out directly to his untouchable audience. This first series ends up with a bang, literally, but shockingly spectacular as it is, it's too fantastical and doesn't ring true, like lots of other plot-lines in the show.The acting is very good, despite my observations above, Richardson obviously relishing every line, especially the now familiar tag-line "...I couldn't possibly comment". This was still however racy, entertaining viewing although even knowing it was written by a Westminster insider, I never got the sense that I was close to the realms of truth, but once that point is conceded, this parliamentary pantomime is fun to watch.