House of Cards (1990)

As political dramas go, they just don't come any better than this - and Ian Richardson proves a master as an epitome of an ambitious schemer that even Machiavelli would have been proud of. He is "Urquhart", the chief whip of a government under new leadership. It's "Collingwood" (David Lyon) who takes the top job, but when he decides against promoting this local secret-keeper, he makes quite a mistake. Fuelled by his conceivably even more ambitious wife "Elizabeth" (Diane Fletcher) and taking advantage of the naive and malleable young journalist "Mattie" (Susannah Harker) he starts on a wonderfully evil, internecine and charmingly menacing yellow (or perhaps black) brick road of his own to Number 10. It's written with some potently insightful insider knowledge of just how power-brokering works, with "Urquhart" using his frequently droll or reprimanding pieces to camera to try and justify his actions, his appraisals of his colleagues and deliver his comically potent use of other people's desires to climb the grassy pole, really entertainingly. The ensemble cast are best summed up via a pithily described platform at the party conference when we are treated to his candid views of each of his colleagues in as disparaging a fashion as possible. There are also super efforts from Miles Anderson as the coke-head press officer "O'Neill" and from Colin Jeavons as his almost ophidian deputy "Stamper" as strings are pulled and careers laid asunder. It's a gloriously effective, satiric, swipe at the introspective and incompetent political class, and shows the ruthlessness of a man with a keen brain in a drama I can watch again and again.