Review of House of Cards

At first I feared the 1990 production quality was going to taint my appreciation of the original House of Cards. However, it soon became clear that this was not the real issue. Ian Richardson's performance was strong, but the frequency of the broken fourth wall was like being beaten over the head. The reliance on this technique to advance the narrative felt like a needlessly "quick and dirty" method of telling a story that could have been done so much more organically. The secondary characters were entirely one dimensional and predictable. The actor who portrayed Stamper was so unbelievably terrible that his performance was almost a parody of itself. It all left me yearning to rewatch Beau Willimon's vastly superior rendition of the story.