TV: House of Cards trilogy
Sep. 2nd, 2010 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseHouse of Cards entirely passed me by due to my being ten years old when it aired. What I do remember from around that time was watching the poll tax riots on the news which formed my first political memory. It was also the rhetoric from around that time that set me on the path to being a Tory at heart regardless of policy. I don’t like Cameron, I think he’s useless and his PR people need to be sacked too but there’s an emotional pull, a small, irrational part of me that wants the Conservative party to be better, to be the sort of party I was rabidly loyal to in my youth. Of course it’s highly likely that being a lot younger than I am now I viewed everything through rose-tinted, free market, finance professional heritage glasses. Of course Lady Thatcher didn’t hurt that either: the first female PM was a formidable leader and looking back I’m fairly sure that she won out on plenty of occasions through sheer force of personality. But hero-worship and past affiliations aside there’s also some fun to be had to come back now to a series that features a fictional Tory government being the vicious old boy’s network that the Tory’s have a reputation for being.
This is the adaptation of Macbeth that I’ve always wanted where Lady Macbeth simply has more screen time and the view gets to see glimpses of her wielding real power. It’s also a damning indictment of current series, in particular adaptations of earlier works, that while House of Cards aired in 1990 somehow it’s a series that’s managed a range of female characters. There are powerful women, helpless women, arrogant women and by the time of the second series two black women who haven’t been the Angry Irrational Black Woman of ridiculous tropes. Then again perhaps it’s a decade issue because Kavanagh QC which began in 1995 also manages to have a black female character who isn’t that stereotype either. It’s never a good sign when a series that aims to show a very misogynist, classist, passively racist environment somehow still manages to feature decent women, POC and gay characters what hold up as entirely superior in the execution in comparison to more modern, progressive, pieces.
The initial series is really beautifully done and the characters are so real to the era that it’s not at all inconceivable that people like that would have existed within Thacherite Britain. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Francis Urquhart and Elizabeth Urquhart, are that brand of cunning, ambition and Tory ideals. Urquhart’s methods, while vicious, are always plausible and his second in command, Tim Stamper, is the sort of character I can’t quite decide if I’d want to be or simply sleep with. Interestingly, while House of Cards didn’t register on my critical spectrum, I do seem to have watched enough of it that Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade in the Granada Sherlock Holmes adaptation always struck me as familiar, albeit a little out of place and looking back, I might even be able to blame my fondness for pinstripe on characters like Tim Stamper.
The first series then being the triumph of Macbeth over the reigning monarch, the second is the power struggle with the actual constitutional monarch. To Play the King really is true to the era and I do recall watching parts of it, mostly without too much interest because I hadn’t seen the prior series. I do recall being completely blasé about the featured gay couple though now I am left wondering if one of them was meant to look like Portillo, and not really grasping the significance of Urquhart’s second affair due to no knowledge of the prior series. The portrayals of the then royal family are bitingly funny though I maintain that Prince Charles has never been that wanting for politically savvy. He’s an idealist certainly but also a smart one. To Play the King then is about the power struggle between Parliament and the monarchy, involving the clash of idealism against rather cynical pragmatism. Urquhart is very much in the vein of EU technocrats in the era before the EU had even been born: he believes passionately in the greatness of Britain and the British people but also that British success can only be achieved through his own methods. In that sense he actually reminds me a little of Nigel Farage who likewise believes passionately in the greatness of Britain in the controversial fashion that we can achieve that greatness once again on the world stage without the EU. Oddly, while I am still just about a federalist, though a federalist who believes that if Britain gets its act together we should be leading the EU rather than being led by it, if the day ever comes when I get completely disillusioned and bitter over the European project then Nigel Farage is the sort of man I’d look to as a leader.
Going on alongside the battle between Urquhart and the King is the unfolding melodrama of his new mistress and his pushing Stamper aside. In fact, for the duration of the series I kept yelling at the screen that that was the way to disaster. Urquhart’s mistreatment of Stamper, his refusal to give loyalty its due when up until then they’d been the closest of conspirators proves the undoing of that relationship. Of course Lady Macbeth heads off the problem before it can come to a head but in following her advice Urquhart destroys his only confidante who really was in the thick of it with him. There’s a beautiful scene where Stamper meets the mistress secretly to share information that proves that Urquhart murdered his last mistress and while he does admit to gloating over hurting the current mistress with this revelation he also gives a little speech about how he only ever wanted to serve Urqhart, replete with betrayed faith and heartbreak. I can never recall where I read the article or even if I read all of it but the line that came to mind was one I read a long time ago about the almost love letters that washed up spies send to their handlers at the end, full of declarations of having given their all, having wagered all and having lost everything. There’s an unspoken passion there, an almost fanatical devotion that once betrayed spells disaster. And of course, this being the story of a flawed but great man, a Shakespearian tragic hero, that severing of bonds would have been entirely avoidable had only Urqhart been less capricious of his treatment of Stamper. In fact it’s summed up nicely by Urqhart’s pseudo-soliloquy where he admits that he treated Stamper with contempt because it pleased him to do so.
By the time of The Final Cut of course it’s all starting to go downhill. Urquhart appoints a new Parliamentary Private Secretary who’s playing her own game but makes the mistake of attempting to manage it all by herself. Claire Carlsen is an interesting character in of herself because she’s obviously playing a dangerous game and certainly has plans that involve pitting Urquhart against her ex-lover Makepeace so that they end up destroying each other but the fact that she relies on implementing those plans entirely by herself is the final factor that brings her down. Without a support network she has to manage everything by herself and eventually becomes too obvious, at least to Makepeace. Her futile plotting mirrors Urquhart’s in that sense because having ordered the death of his closest confidant bar his wife he’s left to manage his schemes by himself. Not that this is helped by the fact that he starts to ignore his wife’s council on occasion and becomes entirely obsessed with being the longest party leader and beating Margret Thatcher’s record.
The last series is tragic in the extreme illustrating Urquhart’s downfall and the clear divide between what he wants to achieve and the possibility of achieving it. In the last episode he admits that he can no longer grasp the feel of the House and is failing to anticipate what his audience wants when it comes to Parliamentary speeches. Certainly, by that point the information he’s most relying on isn’t accurate and comes filtered through Carlsen’s manipulations but the real tragedy is that it takes him so long to realise that he’s lost touch himself. Of all the people surrounding him even his own wife, while she does seem to genuinely love him, does also have her own interests at heart. In fact, as I muttered every so often during The Final Cut he’d already gone and killed the only person who really had his back and could have done something effectively about all the others around him.
Of course at the very end Lady Macbeth has a very final solution to the entire problem of rising discord, scandal and judicial proceedings and that plays out beautifully. Urquhart dies in her arms and the lurking spectre of Corder offers his services to Makepeace, the obvious successor and oddly, there’s still something of a victory for Urquhart in that because he’s managed to corrupt the incorruptible in the person of Makepeace.
Overall, I have to say that I shamelessly adore this series. Granted, I’m not as fond of The Final Cut as the other two parts mostly likely because Stamper’s dead by that point and it’s all falling apart. And bizarrely I don’t actually recall seeing much of The Final Cut on TV when I was fifteen so possibly I did watch fair portions of To Play the King and then decided that I didn’t care about the series now that my favourite villainous alliance had been broken up by the death of one at the hands of the other. But at the end of the day this really is one of my favourite series and a good reason why I respect the BBC programming of that era. Perhaps it was even this series that helped in some part to shape my childhood, after all, I certainly think I’ve discovered the root of all evil when it comes to pinstripe suits.
This is the adaptation of Macbeth that I’ve always wanted where Lady Macbeth simply has more screen time and the view gets to see glimpses of her wielding real power. It’s also a damning indictment of current series, in particular adaptations of earlier works, that while House of Cards aired in 1990 somehow it’s a series that’s managed a range of female characters. There are powerful women, helpless women, arrogant women and by the time of the second series two black women who haven’t been the Angry Irrational Black Woman of ridiculous tropes. Then again perhaps it’s a decade issue because Kavanagh QC which began in 1995 also manages to have a black female character who isn’t that stereotype either. It’s never a good sign when a series that aims to show a very misogynist, classist, passively racist environment somehow still manages to feature decent women, POC and gay characters what hold up as entirely superior in the execution in comparison to more modern, progressive, pieces.
The initial series is really beautifully done and the characters are so real to the era that it’s not at all inconceivable that people like that would have existed within Thacherite Britain. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Francis Urquhart and Elizabeth Urquhart, are that brand of cunning, ambition and Tory ideals. Urquhart’s methods, while vicious, are always plausible and his second in command, Tim Stamper, is the sort of character I can’t quite decide if I’d want to be or simply sleep with. Interestingly, while House of Cards didn’t register on my critical spectrum, I do seem to have watched enough of it that Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade in the Granada Sherlock Holmes adaptation always struck me as familiar, albeit a little out of place and looking back, I might even be able to blame my fondness for pinstripe on characters like Tim Stamper.
The first series then being the triumph of Macbeth over the reigning monarch, the second is the power struggle with the actual constitutional monarch. To Play the King really is true to the era and I do recall watching parts of it, mostly without too much interest because I hadn’t seen the prior series. I do recall being completely blasé about the featured gay couple though now I am left wondering if one of them was meant to look like Portillo, and not really grasping the significance of Urquhart’s second affair due to no knowledge of the prior series. The portrayals of the then royal family are bitingly funny though I maintain that Prince Charles has never been that wanting for politically savvy. He’s an idealist certainly but also a smart one. To Play the King then is about the power struggle between Parliament and the monarchy, involving the clash of idealism against rather cynical pragmatism. Urquhart is very much in the vein of EU technocrats in the era before the EU had even been born: he believes passionately in the greatness of Britain and the British people but also that British success can only be achieved through his own methods. In that sense he actually reminds me a little of Nigel Farage who likewise believes passionately in the greatness of Britain in the controversial fashion that we can achieve that greatness once again on the world stage without the EU. Oddly, while I am still just about a federalist, though a federalist who believes that if Britain gets its act together we should be leading the EU rather than being led by it, if the day ever comes when I get completely disillusioned and bitter over the European project then Nigel Farage is the sort of man I’d look to as a leader.
Going on alongside the battle between Urquhart and the King is the unfolding melodrama of his new mistress and his pushing Stamper aside. In fact, for the duration of the series I kept yelling at the screen that that was the way to disaster. Urquhart’s mistreatment of Stamper, his refusal to give loyalty its due when up until then they’d been the closest of conspirators proves the undoing of that relationship. Of course Lady Macbeth heads off the problem before it can come to a head but in following her advice Urquhart destroys his only confidante who really was in the thick of it with him. There’s a beautiful scene where Stamper meets the mistress secretly to share information that proves that Urquhart murdered his last mistress and while he does admit to gloating over hurting the current mistress with this revelation he also gives a little speech about how he only ever wanted to serve Urqhart, replete with betrayed faith and heartbreak. I can never recall where I read the article or even if I read all of it but the line that came to mind was one I read a long time ago about the almost love letters that washed up spies send to their handlers at the end, full of declarations of having given their all, having wagered all and having lost everything. There’s an unspoken passion there, an almost fanatical devotion that once betrayed spells disaster. And of course, this being the story of a flawed but great man, a Shakespearian tragic hero, that severing of bonds would have been entirely avoidable had only Urqhart been less capricious of his treatment of Stamper. In fact it’s summed up nicely by Urqhart’s pseudo-soliloquy where he admits that he treated Stamper with contempt because it pleased him to do so.
By the time of The Final Cut of course it’s all starting to go downhill. Urquhart appoints a new Parliamentary Private Secretary who’s playing her own game but makes the mistake of attempting to manage it all by herself. Claire Carlsen is an interesting character in of herself because she’s obviously playing a dangerous game and certainly has plans that involve pitting Urquhart against her ex-lover Makepeace so that they end up destroying each other but the fact that she relies on implementing those plans entirely by herself is the final factor that brings her down. Without a support network she has to manage everything by herself and eventually becomes too obvious, at least to Makepeace. Her futile plotting mirrors Urquhart’s in that sense because having ordered the death of his closest confidant bar his wife he’s left to manage his schemes by himself. Not that this is helped by the fact that he starts to ignore his wife’s council on occasion and becomes entirely obsessed with being the longest party leader and beating Margret Thatcher’s record.
The last series is tragic in the extreme illustrating Urquhart’s downfall and the clear divide between what he wants to achieve and the possibility of achieving it. In the last episode he admits that he can no longer grasp the feel of the House and is failing to anticipate what his audience wants when it comes to Parliamentary speeches. Certainly, by that point the information he’s most relying on isn’t accurate and comes filtered through Carlsen’s manipulations but the real tragedy is that it takes him so long to realise that he’s lost touch himself. Of all the people surrounding him even his own wife, while she does seem to genuinely love him, does also have her own interests at heart. In fact, as I muttered every so often during The Final Cut he’d already gone and killed the only person who really had his back and could have done something effectively about all the others around him.
Of course at the very end Lady Macbeth has a very final solution to the entire problem of rising discord, scandal and judicial proceedings and that plays out beautifully. Urquhart dies in her arms and the lurking spectre of Corder offers his services to Makepeace, the obvious successor and oddly, there’s still something of a victory for Urquhart in that because he’s managed to corrupt the incorruptible in the person of Makepeace.
Overall, I have to say that I shamelessly adore this series. Granted, I’m not as fond of The Final Cut as the other two parts mostly likely because Stamper’s dead by that point and it’s all falling apart. And bizarrely I don’t actually recall seeing much of The Final Cut on TV when I was fifteen so possibly I did watch fair portions of To Play the King and then decided that I didn’t care about the series now that my favourite villainous alliance had been broken up by the death of one at the hands of the other. But at the end of the day this really is one of my favourite series and a good reason why I respect the BBC programming of that era. Perhaps it was even this series that helped in some part to shape my childhood, after all, I certainly think I’ve discovered the root of all evil when it comes to pinstripe suits.
