House of Cards

This article is about a television show. For other uses, see House of cards (disambiguation).

House of Cards
Written by	Andrew Davies Michael Dobbs
Directed by	Paul Seed
Starring	Ian Richardson Susannah Harker David Lyon Diane Fletcher
Language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	Ken Riddington
Running time	4 × 55 minutes
Distributor	BBC
Chronology
Followed by	To Play The King

House of Cards is a 1990 political thriller television drama serial by the BBC in four parts, set after the end of Margaret Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It was televised from 18 November to 9 December 1990, to critical and popular acclaim. The story was adapted by Andrew Davies from a novel written by Michael Dobbs, a former Chief of Staff at Conservative Party headquarters. Dobbs's novel was also dramatised for radio for BBC World Service in 1996, by Neville Teller, and had two television sequels. The House of Cards trilogy was ranked 84th in the British Film Institute list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.

Overview

The antihero of House of Cards is a fictional Conservative Chief Whip, Francis Urquhart played by Ian Richardson. The plot follows his amoral and manipulative scheme to become leader of the governing party and Prime Minister.

It appears Michael Dobbs did not envisage writing the second and third books, as Urquhart suicides at the end of the first novel. The screenplay of the BBC's dramatisation of House of Cards differed from the book and hence allowed future series. Dobbs wrote two following books To Play the King and The Final Cut which were televised in 1993 and 1995 respectively.

House of Cards draws heavily from Shakespeare's Macbeth and Richard III, both of which examine issues of power, ambition and corruption. Richardson said he based his performance of the scheming Francis Urquhart on the way Shakespeare portrayed Richard III. Frequently during the drama, Urquhart talks through the camera to the audience, breaking the fourth wall.

In the dramatisation, the camera frequently focuses on rats for the symbolic effect of filth and conspiracy.

Plot

After the resignation of Margaret Thatcher ("Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday."), the governing Conservative Party are about to elect a new leader. Francis Urquhart, Member of Parliament (MP) and Chief Whip, introduces viewers to the contestants, from which the popular and decent Henry ('Hal') Collingridge emerges victorious.

Urquhart is secretly contemptuous ("no background and no bottom") but expects promotion to a senior position in the Cabinet. After the general election, which the party wins by a reduced majority, Urquhart makes his suggestions for a cabinet reshuffle but Collingridge – citing Harold Macmillan's political demise after sacking half his Cabinet – effects no changes at all. Urquhart now aims at ousting Collingridge and is confirmed in his resolve by his wife, Elizabeth.

At the same time, Urquhart begins (with his wife's blessing) an affair with the junior political reporter, Mattie Storin. It appears the Urquharts believe that his affair will give him a power over Mattie that will enable him to manipulate her position at the main newspaper,The Chronicle, to ensure that, within its pages, Francis comes off well and his rivals for the leadership, very badly. Mattie, while talented, is naïve and apparently somewhat unstable. She has an apparent Electra complex and declares that she can not call Urquhart by his first name but wants to refer to him as 'Daddy', a word that later figures prominently in Urquhart's painful flashbacks of Mattie.

Urquhart enlists the services of one of the party's public relations consultants, Roger O'Neill, a charming but unstable man with a cocaine habit. Blackmailed about this, Urquhart starts to use O'Neill to undermine Collingridge. O'Neill gives a young opposition MP information concerning hospital cuts that would make Collingridge look foolish at Prime Minister's Question Time. Later, an internal poll showing a huge drop in support for the Tories is also leaked to the press. The seemingly unambitious and trustworthy Urquhart directs the prime minister's distrust towards Party Chairman, Lord Billsborough, who had backed environment secretary Michael Samuels, in the earlier leadership contest, causing the prime minister to eventually sack Billsborough. At the same time, Urquhart encourages Patrick Woolton, Foreign Secretary and representative of the right-wing of the party, and newspaper tycoon Benjamin Landless, to support Collingridge's removal.

O'Neill also sets the scene for Urquhart himself to pose as Collingridge's gentle but alcoholic brother Charles, so that he can trade in Mendox Chemicals, a company about to benefit from the Government. As a result of the latter, Collingridge becomes accused of insider dealing. This, combined with his eroding image and his bad showing at the party conference, eventually forces him to resign.

After Collingridge's resignation, Urquhart – in imitation of Shakespeare's Richard of Gloucester – at first feigns unwillingness to stand before announcing his candidacy. With the help of his underling, the weaselish Tim Stamper, he goes about making sure his competitors drop out of the race: Peter MacKenzie, secretary of health, accidentally runs his car over a protester at a demonstration staged by Urquhart and is forced to withdraw by the public outcry, while Harold Earle, secretary for education, is blackmailed into withdrawing by anonymously sending him old pictures of him and a rentboy he had paid for sex.

The first ballot leaves Urquhart to face Samuels and Woolton. Woolton is eliminated by a prolonged scheme: At the party conferences, Urquhart pressured O'Neill into persuading his personal assistant and lover, Penny Guy, to have sex with Woolton, in a tryst that is record through a bugged ministerial red box in Woolton's suite. When the tape he sent to Woolton, he is led to assume that Samuels is behind the scheme and backs Urquhart in the contest. Urquhart also receives support from Collingridge, who is unaware of Urquhart's role his own downfall. Samuels is forced out of the running when it is revealed that he backed leftist causes as a student at Cambridge.

Stumbling across contradictions in the allegations against the Collingridge brothers, Mattie begins to dig deeper. On Urquhart's orders, O'Neill arranges for Mattie's car and flat to be vandalised, in order to deter her from following up on the story. However, O'Neill becomes increasingly uneasy with what he is being asked to do and with the possibility of being discovered. His cocaine habit adds to his instability. Urquhart mixes O'Neill's cocaine with rat poison, causing him to kill himself when taking the cocaine in a motorway lavatory.

Though initially blind to the truth of matters thanks to her relations with Urquhart, Mattie eventually deduces that Urquhart and his associates are behind the unfortunate downfalls of Collingridge and all of Urquhart's rivals. The story ends with Mattie Storin looking for Urquhart at the point when it looks like his victory is certain. She eventually finds him on the roof garden of the Houses of Parliament, where she confronts him. He admits to what he has done, in particular, to Roger O'Neill's murder. He then asks whether he can trust her and though she answers in the affirmative, he says he doesn't believe her any more.

Here the ending of the TV series differs from the novel. In the novel, Urquhart throws himself from the roof, knowing that Mattie will not hide her information. In the TV series, it is Urquhart who throws Mattie off the roof, onto a van parked below. The book also did not contain a romance between Mattie and Urquhart, as the dramatisation did.

Subsequently, the TV series has Urquhart defeating Samuels in the second leadership ballot and ends with him being driven to Buckingham Palace to be invited to form a government by the Queen.

Deviations from novel

• Urquhart never speaks directly to the reader; the character is written solely in a third-person perspective. In the series, he regularly speaks directly into the camera to his viewers.
• When alone, Urquhart is much less self-assured and decisive. He smokes and swears frequently.
• Mattie Storin worked for the real newspaper The Daily Telegraph not the fictional Chronicle.
• Mattie Storin does not have a relationship with Urquhart or even talk with him frequently; she does have a sexual relationship with John Krajewski.
• Urquhart's wife is called 'Miranda' and is an extremely minor character, not sharing in his schemes. (In To Play the King and The Final Cut, however, she is called 'Elizabeth' and plays a larger role, as in the BBC drama.)
• Benjamin Landless is from the slums of East London, not from Canada.
• The Conservative party conference was in Bournemouth, not Brighton.
• Tim Stamper does not exist (although Dobbs introduced him in To Play the King).
• Earle's rent boy appears in person at an important speech of his, distracting him; subsequently, Earle is harassed by reporters who have been told of his indiscretion.
• At the end, Urquhart threatens to kill Mattie Storin by hitting her with a chair, but refrains in a fit of cowardice, and jumps to his death after she leaves the roof garden.

Reception

The first installment of the TV series coincidentally aired two days before the Conservative Party leadership election. Author Dobbs said that John Major's leadership headquarters "came to a halt" to view the show. During a time of "disillusionment with politics," the series "caught the nation's mood."

It has been ranked 84th in the British Film Institute list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.

"I couldn't possibly comment"

The drama also introduced and popularised the phrase: "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment." It was used by Urquhart whenever he could not be seen to agree with a question, with the emphasis on either the 'I' or the 'possibly' depending on the situation. The phrase was even quoted in the House of Commons following the series. A variation on the phrase was written into Terry Pratchett's Hogfather for Death, voiced by Richardson. A further variation was used by Nicola Murray, a fictional government minister, in the third series finale of The Thick of It.

Remake

House of Cards will be remade into an original series in the United States. The show is set to star Kevin Spacey as well as be produced by David Fincher and Spacey's Trigger Street Productions. It marks Netflix's entry into original programming and is queued to air in late 2012. The series is set to be filmed in Baltimore, Maryland.

Related topics

• Politics in fiction
• A Very British Coup, a similar drama of fictional contemporary British politics from a left-wing perspective
• Yes Minister, a satirical sitcom about a generic British government, widely described by politicians as accurate

External links

• House of Cards at the Internet Movie Database
• House of Cards at BBC Four
• House of Cards at Action TV
• House of Cards at British Film Institute Screen Online