Subtext and subterfuge abound in this master-class of a political thriller that is as relevant today as it was 25 years ago.
It's 1990 and Thatcher has just stepped down leaving a power vacuum at the top of the party. Honest man Henry Collingridge becomes Prime Minister. Chief Whip Francis Urquhart believes himself in line for a top role in the cabinet but when the PM leaves him behind he decides it's time for a change (first Glamis, then Cawdor, then King hereafter). Through a series of clever manoeuvres and set-ups and the manipulation of the press, in particular the young and impressionable reporter Mattie Storin, he removes first Collingridgee, then his rivals and finally anyone with any hold on him. Will he make it all the way to the palace and number 10, or will Birnam forest come to Dunsinane?
The Macbeth analogies do come thick and fast in this story, and why the hell not when it works so well? Michael Dobbs and Andrew Davies, who were to later go over to America and adapt the story for an American audience, wrote a near perfect play for TV that is made all the more daring by the fact that it was written and realised while Thatcher was still in power. It twists and turns like the proverbial twisty turny thing and though I've watched it half a dozen times or more it still thrills and excites me every time. Ian Richardson's malevolent evil rises like a tide that washes all before him, Diane Fletcher as his Lady Macbeth has a wonderfully understated drama about here (funnily enough she played Lady Macduff in Polanski's 1971 version) and Susannah Harker is brilliantly wide eyed in her search for a father figure.
You may think that Spacey in his guise as the American Urquhart is one of the best things on TV -
I, of course, couldn't possibly comment.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098825/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
No comments:
Post a Comment