House Of Cards UK “The Final Cut Part One”

The final British House of Cards mini-series opens with Francis Urquhart and his wife shooting an old dog as an act of euthanasia.

So, yeah, death is hanging over this series.

To hammer that home, next we go to a funeral for, it is implied, Margaret Thatcher.  Francis is there.  He’s mourning publicly but mostly telling his wife he wants to leave an impact by first, serving longer than Thatcher, and second, making an impact on Europe the way he has for Britain.  He wants to be the greatest PM since Churchill in the minds of the public.

You know, it occurs to me that Elizabeth Urquhart has been a rather minor character up to this point.  But here we see she has plans and ideas of her own, mostly revolving around Francis’ retirement, whenever that is.  As such, she is pushing Francis to side with the Turks in a border dispute to get a financial windfall for themselves.  All Francis has to do is pick the right judge to preside over a five judge panel.  Since the other side in the dispute, the Greeks, selected a French judge, Francis finds a judge with impeccable honesty who just happens to hate the French.

But kickbacks?  Man, I know Francis has committed murder, and heck, he’s still flashing to Mattie, while also flashing to some guys he took out in his youth in Cyprus for some reason, that’s the sort of thing that could bring him down.

It doesn’t help that his second in command, Tom Makepeace, was the real mastermind for the Cyprus deal Francis took credit for.

Or that some street hooligans ran his car off the road, knocking him out and causing Francis’ security detail to kill the three men who were armed with at best tire irons and a lot of bluster.

Plus, Francis just turned 65.

Death is in the air.  Will Francis step aside as it is his time, something he said many times about others?  Time will tell.