House of Cards, then and now

I first saw House of Cards in the early 90's on the BBC, and I fell in love. I had never seen anything like it. The treachery, the plotting, the cold-blooded destruction of lives, careers and reputations. Incredibly powerful stuff.

Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart, the Tory Chief Whip has been cemented in my mind as the ultimate cunning statesman; as smooth and charming as he is vicious and cruel.

But this isn't about that. Well not exactly. This is about the 2013 remake starring Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood, the Democratic Congressional Majority Whip. Mr. Spacey is an excellent veteran actor, and delivers a good performance as usual.

Both shows follow the same path more or less, but with the BBC version lasting only four hours, and the Netflix show spanning thirteen 45 minute episodes, the americans have been forced to find more things to do. This naturally changes the story quite a bit, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

At first, I was unconvinced as I started watching, but I soon realized that to simply copy the original would have been wrong. This remake is more of a proper rewrite, in that it is an american show about american politics. Their political system is bigger and perhaps more complicated (I'm no expert), and the new show reflects that I think. Soon enough I happily settled in to enjoy what they had to offer.

That's when a creeping sense of unease set in. Several changes have been made, and while mostly understandable, several major changes felt out of place.

Take Francis as an example. Superficially the changes from Urquhart to Underwood are unimportant, but where Urquhart wielded a scalpel, Underwood uses an axe, and there is no way Urquhart would ever have made the mistakes Underwood did. Like go on CNN and make an absolute ass of himself. This takes away a great deal of the characters panache. At times it feels as if he hadn't really thought out his scheme at all.

Underwood does use the famous line ”You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment”. This line was made famous by the original House of Cards, and has been used by real politicians since.

Then there's Francis's right hand man. Originally Tim Stamper, now Doug Stamper. The name change is of no matter, but the personality change is definately a problem. A whips job is to reign in and guide the more junior members of the party, MP and Congressman alike. Now Tim could get the job done, with terror if need be, but Doug comes across as whiny rather than scary. Not good...

But the worst major personality change comes in the shape of the young female journalist. Mattie Storin becomes Zoe Barnes. Again no issue with the name, but the character, as an inexperienced reporter with a keen nose for a good story and great instincts, who becomes involved with the great statesman, Mattie filled the role admirably where Zoe is rude, arrogant and as sublte as a brick to the face. The whole character fails completely. Instead of sympathy I felt contempt.

There's a long plotline with Mrs. Underwood and her work, that never existed in the original, but this works pretty well, as they really needed something to do with their time increase. I didn't find it that interesting, but it wasn't bad.

They have also done a good job depicting the relationship between corporate and political America, I have no complaints about that.

Overall, the Netflix version is pretty enjoyable, but it feels quite clumsy compared to the original. It misses the mark more than once, but not so often as to ruin the show.