Let's talk about House of Cards! (massive spoilers)

Cafe Society
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I’ve just watched the “House of Cards” trilogy, the BBC’s series depicting the rise and

SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE

Eventual assassination of Francis Urquhart. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend you do - it’s on Netflix streaming.

Anyway, I thought it might be neat to talk about the show for a bit. A few thoughts:

1.) I was impressed at how effectively the series used the “break the fourth wall” trick. Urquhart addresses the audience as a trusted colleague, almost a friend, and it’s surprisingly easy to find oneself on Urquhart’s “side” - even though he’s clearly a monster.

2.) Another funny thing - even though Urquhart is a murderer and a monster, it seems like he could have almost been a very good PM, if he’d only been slightly less evil. For one thing, I honestly believe there’s not a bigoted bone in Urquhart’s body - in the first series, he describes Collingridge’s foreign secretary to the audience as a bigot, racist, and anti-semite in tones of genuine disgust. Urquhart simply has no time for this sort of thing.

It’s also worth pointing out that, from time to time, Urquhart is simply right. In the second series, “To Play the King,” the King is supposed to be the more sympathetic character - the compassionate, principled man in opposition to Urquhart’s venality. But I’d submit that Urquhart was correct to oppose the King, and do everything he could to break him. Sure, this particular king might have been a far better human being than this particular PM - but it’s surely a dangerous thing for the monarchy in a democratic system to assume a vocal role in the policy debate. The King was a threat to British democracy - and Urquhart removed that threat. Good for him.

3.) On the other hand, he also shot two Greek Cypriot kids in cold blood, tossed one lover to her death, had a journalist shot, had another lover blown up along with his own party chairman, and topped it off with the Cyprus debacle - which led to the deaths of a number of British soldiers and Greek Cypriots, including unarmed schoolgirls. That’s less cool.

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I loved the first one. The worst I can say about it is that it went a little heavy on the “rat” motif. The ending, even though you could see it coming, still came as a shock.

The second one had something of a “second-verse, same-as-first” feeling to it. The deaths at the end of that weren’t shocking or surprising. The third seemed over-the-top with Urquhart becoming so right-wing and planning his “Falklands” in Cyprus to match Maggie Thatcher’s, but I enjoyed the ending–once again, saw it coming but it was still a jolt.

I think that part of the difference between the first and the other two stories was that, in the first one, Urquhart is something of an underdog–the overlooked Chief Whip–and his opponents are for the most part people who are at least as bad as he is. As he removes the other contenders for the next PM, you can’t help feeling that deserve what’s coming to them. Up to a point, you can sympathize with him and root for him. It’s only near the end that he and the Lady-Macbethish Mrs. U begin to target less deserving victims. In the second and third stories, he’s a man of power crushing those who oppose him.

I’ll have to think about your point about the King; he had my sympathies*, but I can also see the point where he crossed a dangerous line between what is and isn’t acceptable for a monarch to participate in politics.

I would like to add that Mr. Urquhart and Sir Humphrey Appleby taught me most of what I know about British politics. :slight_smile:

*Being played by Michael Kitchen, whom I adored even before Foyle’s War, he naturally would.

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I agree with everything that’s been said. I enjoyed all three installments, but thought each sequel was not quite as good as its predecessor, IMHO. The first show is by far the best. And I agree about To Play The King - the delicious irony is that the evil PM is entirely in the right, constitutionally, to defy and eventually destroy the only-the-best-intentions but politically meddlesome King.

In the book House of Cards, incidentally, Urquhart commits suicide when his murder of the reporter, Mattie Storin, is exposed; he never becomes PM.

If you liked HOC, I highly recommend Jeffrey Archer’s political thriller First Among Equals, about the intertwined careers of several MPs, from the Sixties through the early Nineties, as each strives to become PM. Real politicos like Ted Heath, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher appear now and then. The book’s a bit farfetched in spots, but a very entertaining read.

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