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House of Cards (1990)

1990 · Drama · political-drama, political-satire

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The 1990 BBC House of Cards is a four-part political thriller of exceptional economy and malice, following Chief Whip Francis Urquhart as he orchestrates the downfall of a prime minister with cold intelligence and darkly comic relish. Ian Richardson's career-defining performance — punctuated by Shakespearean asides direct to camera — gives the show an intimacy and wit rare in political drama. Adapted from Michael Dobbs' novel by Andrew Davies, it draws explicitly on Macbeth and Richard III to construct a portrait of ambition that reviewers find both timelessly plausible and compulsively watchable. Tightly focused, literate, and caustic about the machinery of power, it is widely regarded as superior to its own American remake and both British sequels.

From the reviewers

Francis Urquhart is not a nice guy, and he eventually shocks both us and himself with how far he is willing to go to obtain his seat of power, but the sheer intelligence and complexity of his schemes compels our admiration.
Andrew Davies' cunning screenplay borrows the Shakespearian device of having our bad guy speak soliloquies to the audience. This is hard to get away with, but Davies pulls it off with a charm reminiscent of RICHARD III or OTHELLO
HOUSE OF CARDS is superior to its two sequels in that actual political issues play almost no role in the doings of the politicians; it's all about personal reputation and trading of favors and influence, and the two parties appear virtually identical.
He embodies all that is to be loathed, and yet grudgingly admired, about politics, and does so with a cunning charm and spot-on delivery.
This, the UK version, was much more focussed, was far less gratuitous in its scheming and knew when to stop.

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