At last, the third series of the US version of this intelligent political exposé is out on Netflix Trying to extend their stay in the White House: Kevin Spacey and Robin
Wright in House of Cards, season three.
There have been rational objections to it being released only on
Netflix. Some dislike being forced to watch on small computer screens
when there’s a perfectly lush, plasmatic greed-screen sitting uselessly
in the corner (though a Chromecast dongle can fix that).
Some will bicker over whether to binge-watch the full 13 episodes
(all released at once) or ration themselves – ah, the tyranny of choice –
to a scheduled weekly slot. I’d prefer the latter, but I once occupied
myself throughout a surprisingly dull (the view for five days was of
small, unhappily damp birch trees) trans-Siberian luxury train journey
by watching the entire box-set of the seventh season of The West Wing, so what do I know? Still, hey, it’s the (or one) way forward, and mention of The West Wing brings me to my point: what’s it like?
The fact that it has already won two Emmys and three Golden Globes,
and along the way established Netflix, still only six years old, as a
big contender in the metamorphising TV marketplace, should speak
volumes. And, yes, it’s great. Adapted from the original British
early-90s series of the same name, but moved to Washington and starring Kevin Spacey
and Robin Wright, it’s every bit as much as all those adjectives
applied to the first – machiavellian, dysfunctional, cynical – but even
darker, in every sense. Spacey’s character Frank Underwood has, in his
political clawing to the very top – he’s now in the Oval Office –
already pushed a reporter under a subway train, engineered the suicide
of a congressman and enjoyed a bout of troilism.
Strangely, now that he’s actually there, he seems, bizarrely, to want to do good.
This was allegedly part of the problem with the actual opening episode.
Some have complained that, with the glittering prize of Potus, the
presidency of the free world, already in his hands, the writers have
left him with unattainable ambitions, for where exactly do you go from
there? There are benefits to the only way being up.
But Underwood, of course, didn’t get to the Oval Office except by
default, by ousting an incumbent in his spirited weasel fashion, and now
has a limited span till the next election. And fierce problems with
Russia, whose president Victor Petrov (would any Russian president really
have those initials?) is due shortly to visit, with interesting
developments for Underwood’s wife (Wright); and a Republican Congress is
blocking his every move; and his ratings are disastrous; and he’s lost
his chief of staff. And the Democratic party leaders want him to stand
down.
He deals with all of this in suitably Frank fashion. That is, you can
see the brain whirring in every shot and coming up with every possible
solution, other than the honest one. The loyal chief of staff returns,
limping from hospital, only to find he’s been thoroughly replaced
(though mark my words, Doug Stamper will be back, and hell will hath no
fury). Underwood launches an apparently virtuous and impossibly
ambitious campaign to get every American back to work, and essentially
bullies his entire team into accepting it, despite their wheedles (“Sir,
we can do a version of that.” “I don’t want a VERSION. I want a
vision.”) You truly see the skull beneath the skin, not least when he’s
railing against benefits (entitlements) sucking 44% from every tax
dollar.
For a Democrat, he’s far from the sainted Jed Bartlet. Welcome echoes from The West Wing return,
not least in this show’s ability to focus unashamedly on a minor point
of legislation on which major principles turn. But Frank (in whose
hands, the way they turn is dirty) is an equally grand creation, brought
to life magnificently by Spacey. Subtly and luminously shot in 50
shades of you-know-what, this is a wonderfully intelligent exposition of
all worldwide politics. Frank will win, but not nicely. Simply because,
as I said, the rain it raineth on the just, and on the unjust, fella.
But mainly on the just, because the unjust stole the just’s umbrella
