House of Cards
2006-02-20
I've sort of stopped reviewing films. Seen a few lately that I couldn't bring myself to talk about (even if they deserved it: The Producers and The Godfather, among others), and I've known for some time that with so many opinions available my bland and indifferentiating enthusiasm hasn't really been of much use to anyone.
So now I'm going to mention only those things I really want to tell you all to see. Starting with what I consider to be the best political drama ever to come out of the UK, with a pretty good shot at best political drama ever (and that's coming from a huge fan of the West Wing).
Depending on how much you trust my judgement, you can either accept my hearty recommendation here, or go on to see why. Spoilers have been kept to a minimum, but probably still exist.
House of Cards was a BBC adaptation of a Michael Dobbs book. [I have the book; I haven't read it in a while but I remember it as being a little heavy going and over-detailed. The television series has all of the good bits without the feeling that you're attending a lecture course on the nature and structure of the Conservative Party.]
Having seen both recently, I was surprised by the similarity between this and 'Party Games', the third-season finale of Yes, Minister. In each, the main character goes straight from being an outsider in a party leadership election to being the Prime Minister, and does so by exquisite political machination. The difference is - as you can imagine - that the bumbling Jim Hacker isn't the one doing the scheming, while Francis Urquhart is a consumate manipulator in the greatest traditions of Machiavelli (and by that I mean the implicit undertone of calling someone Machiavellian, rather than the quite reasonable precepts in books like The Prince.)
And at the end of the day, that is what makes this. Frances Urquhart may well be my favourite fictional character, and it's the writing and acting of this story and its dramatisation that I have to thank for that. He's an excellent plotter who simply gives the impression that his plan will work no matter what - no matter what setback, no matter what cost - and all the time he's making asides to camera and making it clear that he considers the audience a co-conspirator. And at times it certainly feels like it.
The strange thing is that I was hooked to this when it was first broadcast; I got it on VHS as soon as it was available, and got the DVD set (including the other two parts of the trilogy, the middle of which I haven't even seen yet) last week. While that's not strange in itself, I noted the copyright dates when I rewatched it yesterday (it's got to be pretty good for me to watch an entire television series in one sitting) and realised that I was 9 when this was aired.
How did I appreciate any of this when I was 9?
/pshrug
So now I'm going to mention only those things I really want to tell you all to see. Starting with what I consider to be the best political drama ever to come out of the UK, with a pretty good shot at best political drama ever (and that's coming from a huge fan of the West Wing).
Depending on how much you trust my judgement, you can either accept my hearty recommendation here, or go on to see why. Spoilers have been kept to a minimum, but probably still exist.
House of Cards was a BBC adaptation of a Michael Dobbs book. [I have the book; I haven't read it in a while but I remember it as being a little heavy going and over-detailed. The television series has all of the good bits without the feeling that you're attending a lecture course on the nature and structure of the Conservative Party.]
Having seen both recently, I was surprised by the similarity between this and 'Party Games', the third-season finale of Yes, Minister. In each, the main character goes straight from being an outsider in a party leadership election to being the Prime Minister, and does so by exquisite political machination. The difference is - as you can imagine - that the bumbling Jim Hacker isn't the one doing the scheming, while Francis Urquhart is a consumate manipulator in the greatest traditions of Machiavelli (and by that I mean the implicit undertone of calling someone Machiavellian, rather than the quite reasonable precepts in books like The Prince.)
And at the end of the day, that is what makes this. Frances Urquhart may well be my favourite fictional character, and it's the writing and acting of this story and its dramatisation that I have to thank for that. He's an excellent plotter who simply gives the impression that his plan will work no matter what - no matter what setback, no matter what cost - and all the time he's making asides to camera and making it clear that he considers the audience a co-conspirator. And at times it certainly feels like it.
The strange thing is that I was hooked to this when it was first broadcast; I got it on VHS as soon as it was available, and got the DVD set (including the other two parts of the trilogy, the middle of which I haven't even seen yet) last week. While that's not strange in itself, I noted the copyright dates when I rewatched it yesterday (it's got to be pretty good for me to watch an entire television series in one sitting) and realised that I was 9 when this was aired.
How did I appreciate any of this when I was 9?
/pshrug
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