(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
If you’ve never watched the BBC House of Cards series, you need to rectify this gaping hole in your life immediately. Go to Netflix, type in House of Cards, get them delivered. Watch them. The second installment is called To Play the King, and the third The Final Cut. Get started without delay.
Michael Dobbs- a former aid to Prime Minister Thatcher- provided the source material. Ian Richardson, a stage veteran and founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Society, turned in a performance for the ages as the completely-evil-but-appealing Machiavellian Francis Urquhart. Known simply and appropriately by his initials “FU”, Dobbs and Richardson created one of the most delightfully sinister characters you’ll ever have the chance to secretly root for, whatever your feelings of guilt for doing so.
FU is the Chief Whip of the British Conservative government who cheats, lies, steals, bullies and murders his way to the top with ice cold precision and with aristocratic gentility, humor and style. The series debuted on the BBC just as the Conservative Party had thrown out Thatcher and replaced her with John Major. It quickly became a national sensation. FU’s frequent refrain “You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment” entered into the British pop lexicon and remains there to this day.
Try it sometime. It actually is a handy phrase.
In this scene, FU makes his move against the weak John Major like Prime Minister who he has dutifully served but consistently undermined. Ben Landless, a media mogul, is readily identifiable as a character based upon Rupert Murdoch.
Richardson’s portrayal can only be described as inspired. FU frequently addresses the audience en route to perform some new work of villiany. His knowing smiles to the camera are simply priceless. One reviewer noted:
His depiction defines menace and cold cunning but his ultimate success lies in his ability to make Urquhart simultaneously loathsome and likeable. The audience may be repelled by his ruthlessness, but his wit, coolness, preening intelligence and conspiratorial asides to camera combine to make this minister a strangely charismatic monster.
In one scene, FU has done something terrible- had some of his aides killed and made it look like an IRA bombing, or something worse. FU isn’t too fussy to occasionally perform an occasional murder himself, or to order troops to open fire on unarmed crowds.
Riding in the back of his Jaguar limo after some such offense , he looks at the camera and chides you for getting “squeamish.” Urquhart intones with what came to be known in Britain as “the voice”:
Britain needs strong leadership. You voted for strong leadership, and everything I do, you partake of it.
If that doesn’t make you want to take a shower, well, nothing will. Usually I recommend things that are so bad they are good, but this is just good. Very, very good.
Posted by matthewladner 
Jay P. Greene's Blog 