For the first time I can remember ever, I am looking forward to Valentine’s Day. Netflix will be releasing season two of House of Cards, hooray! I didn’t like every single thing about this series, but it was always interesting, and sometimes brilliant. It was juicy. I liked it.
After we binge-watched season one, we went ahead and found the original, British version, and enjoyed that, too — although, predictably, in a different way. James Fallows at The Atlantic (who hastens to reassure us that he’s “not a subscriber to the ‘Oh, the Brits do it all so much more suavely’ school”) thinks that the British version edges out the American one:
There are lots of tough breaks in Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards, but in the end there is a kind of jauntiness to it. People kill themselves; politicians lie and traduce; no one can be trusted — and still, somewhere deep it has a kind of American optimism. That’s us (and me). USA! USA!
It’s different in the UK version. Richardson’s Francis Urquhart reminds us that his is the nation whose imagination produced Iago, and Uriah Heep, and Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim” Dixon. This comedy here is truly cruel — and, one layer down, even bleaker and more squalid than it seems at first. It’s like the contrast between Rickey Gervais in the original UK version of The Office and Steve Carell in the knock-off role. Steve Carell is ultimately lovable; Gervais, not. Michael Dobbs, whose novel was the inspiration for both series, has told the BBC that the U.S. version was “much darker” than the British original. He is wrong — or cynically sarcastic, like Urquhart himself.
I’m not so sure “optimism” is the right word for the American version; and I think I agree with Michael Dobbs that the American version is darker.
The British version is most certainly more naked.
You know how British TV and movies are allowed to use actors who have real faces like real human beings, rather than the uniformly plasticized sparkle people that populate American casts. Oh, that dry British hair! Oh, those British pores! The story is presented the same way: one vile action after another, right there on screen. You are fairly sure that when Francis speaks directly to the camera, he means every word he says. Maybe I’m just too dumb to catch on (and maybe I’m missing some nuance, not knowing anything about British politics) but the British version often appeared strangely artless to me, with its constant replaying of the scream “Daddyyyyyyy!” On the other hand, when you watch the final episode, you see that the whole series has been building, with very British patience and reserve, to . . . well, the final episode. You gotta watch it.
The American version
has more ambiguity — characters are more in flux, and their motivations are more confused — which leaves the viewer in a much more precarious place. When Francis speaks to us, we are really not sure that he’s telling us, or even himself, the truth. At the same time, the show aims for a level of purely entertaining stylization, signaled with the blood-and-thunder opening sequence and the bombastic theme music. It is clearly setting out to relish every last sleek, cynical second, and occasionally seems a little taken aback (yes, the show itself. Look, I watch TV when I’m tired) when it dips into true horror — which makes those moments all the more horrible. Oh, I was so glad when that awful little reporter suddenly decided to clean up her apartment. That was good.
Anyway, very interesting stuff, right up my alley. Have you seen both? What do you think?
