Yes, yes, it's the oldest trick in the hipster handbook or at least the most irritating. Oh, you like Homeland? They much prefer the Israeli series Hatufim, which it was bed on. Thought The Killing went off the rails? You should probably have stuck with the Danish original Forbrydelsen. They're annoying, but part of that annoyance is down to them being oh-so-frequently proven correct. Especially so when it comes to House Of Cards. The American series has its roots in the nineties BBC miniseries of the same name, itself adapted from a novel written by Michael Dobbs, a former Chief of Staff at Conservative Party headquarters. So not only did it have the insider perspective the Netflix show claims to have, but it also has the fourth-wall-breaking business and amoral characters. It also did all of those things far better than the American adaptation. Part of that is by virtue of it being a trilogy of three-episode miniseries, so many of the problems the Netflix version has didn't have time to bloom. Plus being based on a work by an actual politician helped with the realism issues. No silly accents, the prestige of a BBC series and the likelihood that Thatcher's government did do a lot of heinous stuff can't have hurt, either. Frank Underwood has nothing on that.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
