Aces High

Yesterday (UKTV History to me and you) have been repeating the House of Cards trilogy, and I've just finished watching the first installment. This was made and broadcast when I was at university and I didn't pay it much attention the first time round, though I remember it coinciding with Thatcher's unexpected demise and the Conservative leadership election, which must have been a dream for the schedulers.

Michael Dobbs's books are famously terrible, but dramatist extraordinaire Andrew Davies turned them into something much darker, filthier and more twisted. Given that Davies is better known for his adaptations of great classics by Austen and Dickens, god only knows what he must have thought when he was asked to adapt this. The money must have been good. But also, he saw something in it that he could twist into an entirely different sort of story. So, Urquart becomes more Machiavellian and speaks to the camera, Mattie Storin gets engaged in a rather pervy affair with him ('call me Daddy' is SUCH a Davies line, that man is pure, glorious filth), and crucially, he kills Mattie at the end rather than having Urquart commit suicide, which must have been a decision Dobbs has thanked Davies for a thousand times, as it allowed him to toss off a couple of sequels.

It's funny watching dramas set in the late eighties/turn of the nineties that are made now: all of the period features are exaggerated. The 1990 London of House of Cards is a grey, cheerless city without a pair of red braces or an acid house party in sight. The nearest we get to any sign of age is that there are no women in high office, no-one uses a mobile phone and Mattie has a touch of grunge about her, with her unkempt hair and sturdy boots. Having said that, Courtney Love she ain't, and Suzannah Harker's sheer wholesomeness (she went on to play sensible Jane in Davies's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) is part of what makes her dangerous liason with Ian Richardson all the more of an eye-opener.

Ian Richardson as Francis Urquart. The most delicious performance you could hope to see. He gets every tiny nuance and expression so spot-on that you never for a moment doubt that this psychopath will make it to number ten no matter who he has to kill to do it. Watching this old man seduce that young girl, only to fling her from the roof garden of the Houses of Parliament is pretty spectacular stuff for a BBC1 drama. And even the smaller roles, particularly Colin Jeavons's lizard-like whip Tim Stamper (another of Davies's creations) and Alphonsia Emmanuel's tragic Penny Guy are terrific.

This has really stood the test of time as a piece of TV drama - it's outrageous, camp, revolting and hilarious, and well worth another watch. The perverted brother of Yes Minister? You might very well think that, I could not possibly comment.