House of Cards Trilogy 3-Blu Ray Discs (600 min)
Released by BBC Home Entertainment on February 5, 2013. SRP $49.99 (Blu
Ray) $39.98 (DVD)
Subtitles: English SDH 4:3 Audio: DTS-HD 2.0 (Main Feature)
On February 1st ,
Netflix made available to its subscribers an all-new adaptation of the BBC
classic The House of Cards. This
starred Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood and is being met with great success.
I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet. I plan on watching it and I
anticipate it being really good. One reason why I haven’t had a chance to watch
the US version is because I have been happily taking my time and going through the
recently released Blu Ray set of the original BBC version starring Ian
Richardson as Francis Urquhart.
The House of Cards is unintentionally named as the entire series of
the Ian Richardson political thriller but it is more appropriately called the The House of Cards Trilogy. The House of Cards is actually the name
of the first series made in 1990 followed by To Play the King in 1993 and finished up with The Final Cut. It’s an important distinction. This is a long-awaited
release by me since the series was broadcast in Standard Definition(SD)
television in the 1990s but was shot on film 16mm film which was still retained
in the BBC Archives which allowed a re-transfer of film to create a new High
Definition(HD) presentation of this series.
I think I need to point out right
now that The House of Cards (the
first series) is one of my all-time favorite series ever. Although two more
followed it, it would be impossible for them to follow along at the level of
quality that was displayed in The House
of Cards. The title really says it all. The series was an adaptation of the
novel of the same name from author Michael Dobbs aka The Right Honourable The
Lord Dobbs. Lord Dobbs was a former
Chief of Staff at Conservative Party Headquarters. Although the series first
aired in 1990 I, myself, did not get into it until 2007 when Ian Richardson
passed away. I knew of his work and I had the trilogy from the original DVD set.
One night I decided to have a look at this. I have friends who love this series
and I wanted to see what it was all about. Sometimes it takes me a while to
look at things that are considered classics by others. I had a feeling that The House of Cards would be really
stuffy. I mean it deals with politics so it can’t be enjoyable, right? I call
this the Yes Minister syndrome and I
talk about it in my article I wrote about my admiration for Yes, Prime Minister here. It took
no time at all to not only be hooked but brought into the story by the charm of
Francis Urquhart.
The story surrounding The House of Cards begins with a new
election. The series has a sort of pseudo alternate Earth sort of feel to it as
it is implied that the outgoing Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher. The new Prime Minister will be Henry
Collingridge. This is good news for Francis Urquhart as he has worked very hard
for Collingridge and expects a very nice position in the new government. Currently
Urquhart holds the office of Chief Whip which yields a fair amount of power in
the government but Urquhart expects more for him. Much to his disappointment he
is overlooked for a prominent position in the new government. In fact, the
government is not going to change much at all under Prime Minister
Collingridge.
Urquhart takes matters into his own
hands. He is tired of being overlooked and has ambitions for higher office. He
feels betrayed by Collingridge and he is going to do something about it. I am
sure the majority of the people who are reading this may have seen the series
before so don’t need to know plot specifics and for those who have never seen
it before, I do not want to ruin the excellence that is this series. I will
explain in basics. Urquhart takes his knowledge of everyone in the government
and in some cases their relatives and clinically dismantles all of them for his
own means. He takes information only to feed it to someone else who uses it to
Urquhart’s advantage. When I watch it, all I can do is sit back and enjoy the
ride. Nobody knows he is doing it.
Then there is Mattie Storin. She is
a young reporter for The Chronicle. She is naïve in many ways but wants to make
a big impression. She knows that everything that is falling apart around the
Collingridge government could bring her a huge story and a big break. She takes
the unusual step of going to Urquhart’s private residence to interview him
assuming that he will throw her out. She is surprised (as well as Urquhart
himself) when he allows her to stay and allows her to ask him questions. The
responses can be used in articles under the guise of anonymity. She caught Urquhart
at the right moment as his ideas have been rejected by the new government and
he’s planning to do something about it. Soon they start having an affair. Mattie
is just one of many in this series that is being used by Urquhart. He is able
to pass information to her that is false or misleading that will further his
own goals and hurt others.
As a political thriller this could
easily have been run of the mill but two key things happen in this production
which differs substantially from the original novel. In the novel, Mattie and
Urquhart do not have a relationship of any kind. In fact, she is investigating
the extraordinary events in the downfall of Prime Minister Collingridge. She
never has an affair with Urquhart. Having Urquhart use Mattie in the television
version is a masterstroke that completely sets apart the two versions. Also, I
think the narrative of the series could have been pretty dry but the television
series made the bold move of having Urquhart often break through the fourth
wall by addressing the viewers. He does this to introduce us to the characters
while delivering his commentary on whether or not they are fools. He will
explain to us why certain things are done in certain ways. He will also tell us
why he needed to do some of the things he did to get to his ultimate goal. The
problem is that I could almost sympathize with him. Urquhart has a charming
side. He also has an evil side. It’s easy to forget he is the villain of the
series. That becomes more apparent as the series goes on. When I started to
watch it for the first time, for me when Urquhart first addresses the viewer, I
knew I was going to like it. He has a dry wit to him and makes this program
stand out because of it.
The House of Cards boasts an amazing cast. Of course Ian Richardson
plays Urquhart with a touch of Richard III and as an English gent. Susannah
Harker is Mattie Storin. Their relationship is key to how this series
progresses. My favourite of all is Colin Jeavons as Stamper who assist the
Chief Whip and is privy to much of what Urquhart is doing. What is Urquhart’s
ultimate goal? To be Prime Minister which he achieves at the end of the series.
It’s not so much a spoiler because how he gets there and who he destroys and
how he destroys them along the way is really part of the fun.
To Play The King
By the start of the second series
things have moved on quite a bit. Once again in this parallel world Queen
Elizabeth II has died. They never mention her by name but it is implied. A new
King is crowned. The King has no name in this program. Once again, there is a
lot of similarity between this King and Prince Charles. They are the same age
and the King in To Play the King has
a lot of “Global initiatives” he wants to bring to the government for help.
What the King wants and how Urquhart
wants to run his government are at odds with each other. The King needs to be
seen to support the government which is not what is happening. In fact the King
will start to attack the Prime Minister on their differences in policy publicly.
Once again, it is fun to watch Urquhart dismantle anyone in his way. Does
enjoying this make me evil?
To Play the King is really good but not as good as The House of Cards. I think a big
reason for this is that they are two very different stories. In The House of Cards, Urquhart is playing
everyone from behind the scenes. Here he is running the government. He is the
face of the government. A lot of that
manipulation is missing from Urquhart. He can take more straightforward means
to accomplish what he wants but don’t worry there still is a decent amount of
blackmailing present!
A couple of issues for me are that
Urquhart runs a thug government. There are a bunch of thugs who strong arm what
they want. At times it almost feels like I am watching the Mafia. I suppose that is the next level after what
Urquhart achieved in The House of Cards.
There is another great guest cast and at the front of it is Michael Kitchen as
the King. He plays it with a snobbish desire to help others without really
knowing the logistics of doing so. To those who have seen it before, does it
seem like at just about the end of every scene he walks out of a room to
another doorway or opens up a bookcase and walks into it? A new character is
introduced named Corder. He appears to be a personal body guard to Urquhart but
he is so much more. He is a big part of the thuggish government. One more thing, the King’s Chief of staff
David Mycroft is a secondary story in this series. Mycroft went to school with
the King. After having a horrible marriage, Mycroft literally stumbles into the
life of another man and they begin a homosexual relationship. This side plot is
interesting but it’s really not that convincing. It seems forced and not
realistic. Just a minor quibble.
The Final Cut
When we rejoin Urquhart he has been
in office for about 11 years. We see some visual foreshadowing of things to
come in the first scene. We are encountered with a version of Urquhart who is
surrounded by enemies and who is also not nearly as sharp as he used to be in
previous years. He will be soon challenged for the leadership of the party.
Once again, in this parallel universe we start with the funeral of Margaret
Thatcher. Yes, I needed to check Wikipedia to make sure I was not imaging
things since she is still alive. Urquhart is close to surpassing her in terms
of how long they both have been in office as Prime Minister.
A big part of the story surrounds
what Urquhart did in Cypress as a soldier in 1956. A Greek man who now lives in
London wants to know what happened to two Greek Cypriots who were killed in
1956. This man’s daughter hopes that Urquhart could help her track that
information down. Little does she realizes when she speaks to the Prime
Minister, she is speaking to her uncles killer. In House of Cards it seems like
Urquhart was a good man who kind of decided to take his future into his own
hands when he started on his journey to Prime Minister but it appears in this
series that Urquhart had been a bad man and murderer most of his life. I am not
a huge fan of that.
I think this is the weakest of the
3 series. In fact, watching the first episode I wasn’t really sure what to
think at all! I have been waiting so long to see it and was very disappointed.
To me, the episode plays out like an amateur production of The House of Cards that Ian Richardson has kindly agreed to take
part in for some reason. I don’t mean to disrespect that amazing talents of
such artists as Isla Blair, Paul Freeman or Nickolas Grace. I was getting
annoyed by everyone calling Urquhart F.U. (Francis Urquhart) which I heard a
few times in To Play the King but the
nickname is exhausted fairly quickly in this series. Luckily the series redeems
itself more towards the end of Episode
Two. There is a point in which Urquhart clears his brain a little bit and
starts behaving more like the Urquhart that I want to watch.
What made the first series great
was what made the third series a little strange. Much of the time in The Final Cut, Urquhart is talking to
us. He has always done it but it seems a lot more here. I think one reason is
that he has very few allies left that he trusts or has any respect for. He
really has no one to talk to except us! Also, it may be a glimpse into how Urquhart
himself is losing his grasp on his own reality.
Production wise this plays out very
differently from both The House of Cards
and To Play the King. The previous
two series were directed by Paul Seed who used imagery to sell the ideas such
as when Urquhart was up to no good scene changes would be accentuated by a rat
running around. The Final Cut was
directed by Mike Vardy. To me it lacks any imagination. It is just not as
visually stimulating as the other two. Also the music on The House of Cards and To
Play the King was done by Jim Parker. I praise his work in my article for Mapp & Lucia here. He has
also done music for Midsomer Murders
and Foyle’s War. In fact if you are
familiar with the music from Midsomer
Murders, then pay attention when watching The House of Cards how similar in sound the two scores are in
orchestration. I would have bet money that Jim Parker did not do the music for The Final Cut but apparently he did. It
does not have the quizzical nuances on the score that lead me into scenes that
are often cued by an oboe. Everything on this production feels straight forward
and not special or unique. I still liked it and The Final Cut redeemed itself in the end but when you are served a
thick slice of prime rib with The House
of Cards, I feel I have the right to be disappointed with an Arby’s roast
beef sandwich with The Final Cut.
Hmmm…. I have never thought about
doing a rating system for reviews before but maybe instead of doing rating
system based on stars I do it based on food. No? Ok.
Extras:
Audio Commentary: Commentary with Ian Richardson and Andrew Davies
for the first episode of each of the three series. This was imported over from
the DVD set. It is of course a very precious extras as Ian Richardson passed
away in 2007 and it is nice to hear him talk about these productions.
An interview with Andrew
Davies on the To
Play The King controversy: This is an excerpt of the BBC program Bite Back. Viewers react strongly to
Andrew Davies insinuating in To Play the
King that the King sends out for prostitutes. Why should they care? This is
a fictitious King! Well, as mentioned above the correlation between this King
and Prince Charles has some strong similarities that did not go unnoticed by
members of the public. Watching the clip is fun and I really don’t think Andrew
Davies comes out of it too well. This was also in the last DVD release.
Westminster: Behind Closed
Doors with Tony Benn:
This is hosted by Tony Benn who was a Member of Parliament and a Cabinet
Minister. This production is from 1995 and I love it. He takes a camera into
interview people who worked there and get an “inside” look into the place. It
originally aired in December 1995 on BBC Two. Tony Benn is an approachable and
inquisitive host. If you are a Doctor
Who fan, you would have seen another program of his on the DVD for The War Machines: One Foot in the Past which this edition focuses on the Post Office
Tower. It’s one of my favorite extras in the range. In my opinion, as much as I
like newly created content for extras, what really gets me smiling is when stuff
like this is included. Older programs that would otherwise gather dust on the
shelves in an archive somewhere. I love it! This is new to the set and was not
on the previous DVD sets. Thank you to the BBC for this extra.
Quality:
As I mentioned above, all three series were shown on BBC 1 in SD. The
series were shot on film and transferred to tape for edit. In this case the
tape would have possibly been 1" for the first series and D3 tape for the other two. For this release, the BBC went back to the original
film (I assume the negatives) and re-transferred the film into HD. For the most
part I think the new transfers look spectacular. It’s cliché to say but this
program never looked better. This restoration started with a 2K scan of the camera negatives, made on the Scanity film scanner at TV Centre. It was graded on Nucoda Film Master through a 42” Dolby reference monitor, with grain management by DVO Tools and Dark Energy and frame cleanup on Dustbuster +. The Final Cut was shot on Super-16, although framed for 4:3. It would have been possible for that series to generate a true widescreen transfer. Thankfully they kept the original 4:3 aspect ratio. 50i masters of all 3 series exist too which could allow for a possible UK release although the original request was to make 23.98fps progressive versions. Though one thing I did notice was that I felt
people’s faces were too red in some scenes of To Play the King. Sometimes it looks like their faces were burning
or they had a fever. I found this in scenes that had Urquhart and the King
outdoors. I also found this in the scene where Mycroft and the King are
swimming together. Yet, that may make some more sense since they have been
exercising. The fact they went back to the film for a new transfer is great.
This is a prestigious series that deserves to look as good as possible. I am
very happy with it. To be honest, it’s a much better example of taking care of
these precious assets than the debacle with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In 2012, Acorn Media released the Blu
Ray of the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy. They did not go back to the original film for this but up-resed the SD
picture to be HD. The results to me were very poor. When I watch that series I
prefer to watch the DVD over the “HD” Blu Ray. The House of Cards HD transfer is great and I am so glad they did
it.
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| The grading on the faces are a little red |
Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t unhappy about something. The end
credits have been re-made for all 3 series and they are present with the current
BBC logo on them opposed to the BBC logo of the time. Now, in my opinion the
BBC logo of the time was ugly but I feel it should be there. Now since there is
no unofficial House of Cards
Restoration Team like there is for Doctor
Who, I will just shut up. Perhaps what might happen is that this series
could get a re-showing on PBS sometime in HD. Maybe it could be part of the Masterpiece Classics. Having this shown
in HD would be really cool!
Below are some examples between the HD and SD versions of the series.
Please click on the images to get full resolution.
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| Restored HD Version |
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| Original SD Version |
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| Restored HD Version |
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| Original SD Version |
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| Restored HD Version |
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| Original SD Version |
Packaging:
I think the cover for this is really simple and clean. It’s all you need
really with Urquhart standing there looking at you. I do miss the type
treatment that included card suits as part of the lettering from the last
release of this series. This set is housed in a standard sized Blu ray case
that holds 3 discs. The menus are in 16:9 (the programs are in original 4:3
ratio). Once again, the layouts of the menus are simple and clean. It’s very
easy to maneuver through and is consistent to the overall style of the set.
The House of Cards is possibly my favorite series. I
actually mean the first series but the other two are very good too. The House of Cards sets such a high
standard that it’s difficult for the other two to compete. That being said,
this set has more good things going for it than bad. It has The House of Cards on it which is worth
it on its own, it has a beautiful new HD transfer, it has a new extra that is
interesting and you can hear the late Ian Richardson talk about his work on it.
Plus, it’s at a really affordable price. It’s a great deal! What? You think I’m
biased? You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.
Disc breakdown:
Disc 1: The
House of Cards 1-4 (Commentary on Episode 1)
Disc 2: To
Play the King 1-4 (Commentary on Episode 1)
Disc 3: The
Final Cut 1-4 (Commentary on Episode 1); Andrew Davies Interview on Bite Back; Westminster: Behind Closed Doors with Tony Benn
For further reading I did four articles for each of the episodes of To Play the King in 2012. I was naïve since
I wrote them as I was watching the episodes so I made a ton of false guesses as
to the overall mystery of the series but the articles are not bad:
Part One
Part Four
Upcoming DVD/Blu Ray Reviews: Something that just showed up in my
mailbox is the complete 22 disc set of Foyle’s
War from Acorn Media which will be released in March. I am taking my time
to savor this World War II era crime series that has lush production values and
of course Michael Kitchen!
This Week: For the next couple of articles I was planning to look
at a very different kind of comedy with Series 2 of ‘Allo ‘Allo! I may hold that back for a while. It will either be
that or an episode of Out of the Unknown.
Have a great week!
Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but do not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com
I am on Twitter: @FromtheArchive
3 comments:
Does anyone know if the Blu Rays in this US set are region-free?
It appears so. I was able to play it on my Region B PAL Blu Ray set.
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