"If I wanted to fuck you, you'd know..."If you typically watch a lot of recently made Washington-set shows, you might have started to notice a pattern, notes Sarah Gilbert. There’s usually a fictitious version of the Washington Post where an ambitious, Hollywood-gorgeous young reporter argues with her editors about blogging versus 'real' journalism (Political Animals). There’s a Machiavellian authority figure with no conscience whatsoever whose primary purpose is to antagonize everyone else (Homeland). Who gets elected and who remains in power depends entirely on a handful of scheming people as opposed to the decision of an informed electorate (Scandal). And none of the locations look remotely like Washington, with the exception of a few scenes of stock footage that punctuate the real action (all three).
House of Cards, produced by and starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher, does all of the above, but it adds a darkness and a sense of moral implosion that makes it extraordinarily compelling, if sometimes uncomfortable viewing. Adapted from the 1980s British drama of the same name, the show is Netflix’s first foray into making a television series, and the provider breaks with tradition by releasing all 13 episodes of season one on the same day, February 1. It’s a bold move that also seems appropriate given our propensity in these post-cable times to devour entire seasons of a TV drama in one weekend... usually via Netflix.
Spacey plays Francis Underwood, both protagonist and antagonist, the majority whip in a House of Representatives of unspecified party affiliation (he’s called Frank by most everyone except his wife, the brilliantly chilly Robin Wright). Having canvassed hard for the incoming president, Garrett Walker (Michel Gill), Frank is under the impression that he’ll be given the position of Secretary of State as a reward, particularly given that he’s also helped Linda Vasquez (Sakina Jaffrey) into the plum role of chief of staff. "I’ve done my time. I’ve backed the right man," he purrs malevolently at a victory party for the new President. Except Walker reneges, and Frank is told he’s needed in the House instead, which kicks off his personal mission to bring down the new administration, goaded by his ice-cold wife and a night smoking Marlboros out the window of his DC rowhouse (if he does have a constituency somewhere, we don’t find out where, at least in the first two episodes). On his hit list: Walker, Vasquez, new Secretary of State Adam Galloway (Ben Daniels), and anyone else unlucky enough to cross his path or get on his nerves. The only person Frank seems to be moderately troubled by is a creepy lobbyist named Remy (Mahershala Ali) whose pocket he appears to be in. Also featured prominently is a handsome, priapic, hard-living congressman from Pennsylvania (Corey Stoll) whom Frank blackmails into acting as his pawn.
These episodes are focussing on the confirmation process of the new administration, so although the timing is not as impeccable as that of the original series was (the first episode happened to screen just days after Margaret Thatcher was toppled from power after 11 years in Number 10, back in 1990), President Obama's recent difficulties in this regard do make it at least somewhat timely. Frank frequently talks directly to camera, as Francis Urquhart did in the British original, and while this allows plenty of insight into his Machiavellian scheming, it’s a device that feels rather dated. It doesn’t help that writer Beau Willimon (Farragut North, The Ides of March) gives the character an endless stream of dramatic metaphors to growl while gazing cruelly at the camera. "This is how you devour a whale: one bite at a time," he says, followed by, "I love that woman. I love her more than a shark loves blood." And then there’s Gilbert's personal favorite, which makes him sound like a Twilight baddie: "I never make such decisions so far after sunset and so long before dawn." We get it, okay? He’s evil.
Nevertheless, after the first episode draws to a close the Dr. Evil-style utterances cool off a bit, and the show relaxes into what it should be: a taut, compelling, brilliantly crafted drama about power and its inevitable toxicity. Frank lucks out when he meets Zoe (Kate Mara), an ambitious and seemingly ruthless cub reporter at the Washington Herald desperate to break out of the Fairfax County council beat and have her own blog. Only her young-fogey editor (Sebastian Arcelus) tells her snottily, "This is the Washington Herald, Zoe. This isn’t TMZ." A weird chain of circumstances, in which Frank ogles Zoe’s ass while she’s heading to the symphony at a fake Kennedy Center, leads to Zoe going to Frank’s house and offering to be his mouthpiece at the Herald, resulting in the kind of manufactured scoops cub journalists can only dream of. Zoe’s first big break is a story about education reform being "left of centre," which apparently goes ten kinds of viral the day after inauguration. "This Web traffic’s absolutely crazy," says Zoe’s editor, who has presumably never heard of BuzzFeed. At least Fincher’s journalists dress in a realistically slobby fashion, if nothing else.
Silliness aside, House of Cards is gripping viewing. The show subverts concepts of good and bad, so the ruthless and vicious inevitably succeed while those unfortunately burdened with a conscience tend to suffer. Frank, our antihero, is a terrible person but also great fun, despite a Southern drawl that takes the edge off his more menacing behavior until you get used to it. (There’s a reason the only Southern TV baddie in recent memory is Will and Grace’s Beverly Leslie.) The show is also a surprisingly decent portrait of a city ruled by the quest for power, even if Frank is far more dastardly in deed (we hope) than our current Cantors and Pelosis. The credits, while showing the kind of lush scenes of monuments we’re so used to in Washington shows, also reveal a grittier side: trash in the streets, the ugly underpasses that envelop L’Enfant Plaza. George Stephanopoulos pops up to interview Galloway in one scene, and John King and Donna Brazile appear in another; Frank even has an issue of Washingtonian sitting on the coffee table in his office. House of Cards leaves us with an interesting conundrum: If our elected representatives were as evil as Frank, might they actually get something done every once in a while?
Afterall, reasons blogger The Ginger Wanderer, essentially political dramas fall into four distinct categories:
1) Politicians are brilliant, super intelligent, hard working public servants with a nice line in very fast, witty banter - e.g. The West Wing.
2) Politicians are decent people who generally try to do the right thing, but politics is hard, there are no easy answers, and they often get it wrong and have to make messy compromises - e.g. Danish TV series Borgen.
3) Politicians are generally self serving and a bit crap, and are constantly being manipulated by their civil servants - e.g. Yes Minister, the Thick of It.
4) Politicians are TOTAL BASTARDS.
You suspect that the truth lies somewhere between (2) and (3), but why let truth get in the way of a good story? And in any event, which political shows work, and which ones don't, tends to depend on the political culture of the country in which they are shown. House of Cards, needless to say, nestles comfortably into the fourth category, and the impression is that the US public, increasingly frustrated by the relentless partisanship of Washington politics, is ready for a show of this nature. In fact you get the suspicion that the one the US would struggle with is category (3), not category (4).
Having viewed the early episodes, The Ginger Wanderer has already seen enough to conclude: "They get it. They really do". This from someone who has seen the original series five or six times and so has a better idea of how it is likely to pan out than most people do ("I am hoping that they might throw a few surprises in, but, without wanting to give away too many spoilers, I am also hoping they use the ending from the UK TV series, and not the book ending, which I suspect even Michael Dobbs would now admit is a bit of a cop out"). The basic outline of the plot so far is very similar to the UK series, he confirms. New Prime Minister/President has just been elected. Crafty Chief Whip/House Majority Whip Francis Urquhart/Frank Underwood is passed over for the job he wants in the new administration and vows revenge, egged on by his even more ruthless wife, and starts undermining the administration and turning its members against each other whilst appearing scrupulously loyal to his boss. Meanwhile, of course, lots of people are having sex with each other, mostly extramarital.
Most of the rest of the cast are essentially pawns in Urquhart/Underwood's cunning plan, including an idealistic and ambitious young female journalist ("Samantha Harker as "Mattie Storin" in the original version, Kate Mara as "Zoe Barnes" in this version") and a loose cannon PR consultant/Congressman with problems with drugs and (in common with most of the characters) keeping his trousers fastened whilst in other people's bedrooms (Miles Anderson as "Roger O'Neill" in the original version, Corey Stoll as "Peter Russo" in this version). Having 26 episodes to really flesh things out will really help - the original ran for only 12 episodes in total, including the two inferior but still very watchable sequels To Play the King and The Final Cut ("they won't be able to remake To Play The King, of course, one of the many unfortunate unintended consequences of our American cousins getting rid of the monarchy was that they have now senselessly deprived themselves of some damn good TV!")
So turning to the differences, then - it is already clear that Frank Underwood is a slightly different breed of monster than Ian Richardson's Francis Urquhart was. Whilst Urquhart was smooth and serpentine, Spacey's Frank Underwood is slightly more of a brutish alligator. Whilst Urquhart was a superciluous "posh Scot", Underwood has a lovely South Carolina drawl, and is a bit more down to earth. For example he likes to get up and eat a rack of ribs at 7:30 in the morning, and he works out on a rowing machine (albeit after much henpecking from Mrs Underwood) - neither of which Francis Urquhart would have been seen dead doing. Sadly there is a shortage of the Shakespearian ad-libbing that Richardson did so well (so far, at least), which is a shame, as Spacey, like Richardson, is an accomplished Shakespearian actor.
The politics are also very different. Whilst Urquhart was a traditional right wing conservative, Underwood is actually a Democrat this time round. One wonders whether Spacey, himself a well known Democrat supporter, took the producers aside at one point and said "Look, I don't mind the blackmail, the adultery, the murder and suchlike fun and games, but I draw the line at playing a Republican!" From what we have seen so far, as far as Underwood appears to have any ideological beliefs at all, he seems to a be fairly centrist moderate, and is certainly contemptuous of the impractical left wing of the party, but even there, his contempt seems to spring from the fact that he knows what they are trying to do can't actually be done, rather than from anything more ideological. You get the impression that he doesn't really believe in anything at all except that he should be in charge.
In this one blogger's view this is actually a good choice. "The problems I had with the two "sequels" to the British version was that the makers, no doubt riding the anti-Tory wave of sentiment in the mid nineties, seemed to be giving the impression that Urquhart was actually a bad Prime Minister as well as a bad man, whereas what made the first series so interesting was that although he was clearly a "bad egg", he was clearly so much more capable (and charming) than his peers, and patently the best man for the job," he writes. By taking the character's ideology out of the equation, the US version will hopefully be able to avoid alienating its likely audience and can potentially push the "evil guy but great politician" angle more easily .
Having said that, the essence of the character is, of course, the same: both incarnations are clever, ruthless, charming and willing to do absolutely anything and screw over anyone on their path to power. The asides to the camera are still in place - we, the audience, are his co-conspirators, and whilst we are appalled by his actions, once again we find ourselves enjoying the consequences of those actions at the same time and "rooting for the bad guy". In this version, even more than in the original, whilst Underwood is clearly a villain, there are no real heroes. The President and the members of his administration are so obviously shallow and out of their depth that we find ourselves enjoying their discomfort even though objectively they are not really bad enough to deserve to suffer the way they do.
Robin Wright as Claire Underwood is a revelation. While Diane Fletcher was great as her equivalent number in the original version, she was very much a background figure - Wright is getting more of a chance to really shine. Let's just say that she is no Princess Buttercup here, but a full blown Lady Macbeth - put in charge of a charity! With predictably scary consequences. Another interesting thing about the show is that while Mrs Urquhart/Underwood is clearly Lady Macbeth, her husband is not Macbeth at all, he's Richard III. Which makes much more sense as a pairing, if you think about it... no wonder Lady M went mad, being married to a man who needs half an hour of soliloquising even to psych himself up into committing a straightforward murder! As mentioned above, Spacey has recently played Richard III, and, like Richardson, he clearly understands the parallels between the two characters, as there were some striking similarities between his two performances (in particular his wry looks of frustration at the audience every once in a while).
Even journalist Zoe Barnes, who is the nearest the show has to a heroine is, quite frankly, a bit of a bitch (she casually tells a fellow journalist who is lusting after her at one point that "If I wanted to fuck you, you'd know!") Interestingly enough, she already has enough information after the first two episodes to know what Underwood is up to (although he is still shamelessly manipulating her). This is quite a big shift from the original, where Mattie Storin was unaware of Urquhart's true nature until the very end - it will be interesting to see how that pans out and what she finds out in subsequent episodes (and when).
***
Now she plays journalist Zoe Barnes in David Fincher's much-anticipated House of Cards remake; the same Fincher who directed her sister in The Social Network and Dragon Tattoo. "I fell in love with the character and asked Rooney to put in a word for me," she states. "A month later I got a call to come and audition. Zoe is a very ambitious, very tough reporter. She strikes a deal with Kevin Spacey’s character so they kind of use each other in this world of politics to get ahead, and things get sort of messy. She’ll pretty much do anything to achieve her goals."
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