Word: urquhart
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Better yet, watch Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson) face a similar problem in To Play the King, a wickedly entertaining BBC mini-series that has just debuted on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre for a four-week run. Urquhart, the Machiavellian party hack who schemed his way to the prime ministry in the 1990 mini-series House of Cards, is now ensconced in power but facing an unexpected challenge from the newly crowned King of England. The politically naive but idealistic monarch (modeled loosely on Prince Charles) has taken to delivering feisty, compassionate speeches about the poor and staging canny photo...
...fictional way, To Play the King does more to demystify the British monarchy than any Daily Mail photos of Princess Di in the exercise gym. The face-to-face confrontations between King and Prime Minister are epic battles of wills and words worthy of George Bernard Shaw. Yet Urquhart's monstrousness ! has taken on almost Shakespearean proportions; the murder that ended Part I continues to haunt him like Banquo's ghost...
With the key creative people from House of Cards returning (writer Andrew Davies, director Paul Seed), To Play the King is a rare sequel that advances rather than diminishes the original. But it doesn't entirely escape redundancy. Urquhart hires a pretty young political operative (Kitty Aldridge) who is seduced by his power just as investigative reporter Mattie Storin was in House of Cards. Urquhart's asides to the camera, charming in the first part, become somewhat precious and predictable by the end of the second...
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Ursula Nadasdy de Gallo, Andrea Dorfman, Brigid O'Hara-Forster, William Tynan, Sidney Urquhart, Jane Van Tassel (Department Heads); Bernard Baumohl, David Bjerklie, Val Castronovo, Mary McC. Fernandez, Georgia Harbison, Ratu Kamlani, Sue Raffety, Susan M. Reed, Elizabeth Rudulph, Susanne Washburn, Linda Young...
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Ursula Nadasdy de Gallo, Andrea Dorfman, Brigid O'Hara-Forster, William Tynan, Sidney Urquhart, Jane Van Tassel (Department Heads); Bernard Baumohl, David Bjerklie, Val Castronovo, Mary McC. Fernandez, Georgia Harbison, Ratu Kamlani, Sue Raffety, Susan M. Reed, Elizabeth Rudulph, Susanne Washburn, Linda Young...