Dealing Out a Winning ‘Final Cut’

No tights in sight, for Francis Urquhart is no classic 15th century Richard III.

Yet the parallels are too striking to ignore. Like the Duke of Gloucester, the BBC’s Urquhart is a courageous but vicious and discontented ruffian who craves power (even when it’s already his), callously murders both friend and foe and is gnarled, in soul if not in body. Also like Shakespeare’s epic villain, his nipping soliloquies, at times rendered in rhythms more befitting the Globe Theatre than 10 Downing, tip us to his schemes and make us co-conspirators.

“I think it’s time to ginger things up a bit,” teases F.U., as he’s known to insiders. Still more ginger? Fasten your braces.

Such glorious, audacious fun is Ian Richardson as this silken thug of a Tory Prime Minister, one of the juiciest TV roles of the decade, that you’d think he’d be as reluctant as you to bid him ta-ta.

Yet term limits apply to someone vile enough to sacrifice even innocent kiddies to further his agendum, so “The Final Cut” is lamentably what its card-deck metaphor advertises: the end, boffo finish, the closing four hours (spread across two consecutive nights of “Masterpiece Theatre” on PBS) of a trilogy adapted from a novel by Michael Dobbs. It’s been a good run, hate to end the show, but schedule the cast party.

Urquhart secured Britain’s top job in the opening “House of Cards” only after heaving his young lover, a reporter, from a rooftop to stop her from publicizing his sinister nature. When last observed in Part 2, “To Play the King,” F.U. had employed poison and a bomb to raise his body count and extend his flourishing career.

“The Final Cut” finds him nearing 65, sharply down in the polls after 11 years atop the government, out of favor with his own party, a bit waxen and powdery at the edges and apparently in decline, yet still with a few deadly tricks up his impeccably tailored sleeve to stave off his rivals. A bit too arrogant this time, is he, though? A little too confident? Getting too soft around the middle? We shall see.

There may be something on TV more rewarding than rotten, resourceful F.U. (“A master politician and occasional murderer,” as “Masterpiece Theatre” host Russell Baker defines him dryly), but just try recalling what it is. Elegant pin stripes disguise the familiar snake, though he’s haunted more than ever by flickering visions of his past foul deeds, in particular a nasty bit of business in Cyprus more than four decades ago.

Even more troubling is Margaret Thatcher, who has just died as the story begins, and whose gussied-up funeral has blackened F.U.’s mood. Despising her commoner roots, he aches to surpass her record 4,227 days in office, to wipe “that bloody woman” from public memory and be recorded as England’s greatest prime minister. Yet on the horizon floats a political cloud of a size that collapsed on and flattened Thatcher.

“These stuffed shirts, these lumps of lobby fodder,” F.U. sniffs, glowering at his predatory successors-in-waiting.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Tom Makepeace (Paul Freeman) is having a torrid affair with political opportunist Claire Carlsen (Isla Blair), and F.U. barely tolerates his gossipy associate Geoffrey Booza Pitt (Nickolas Grace), dismissing him as a “plump little bag of squirming appetites.”

Actually, squirming appetites are at Urquhart’s elbow, for beside him, as always, is his equally corrupt and ambitious wife, Elizabeth (Diane Fletcher), who pulls his strings.

Off in the shadows, these two flicking tongues plan their future--perhaps a shady little oil deal and a Swiss account to hide the payoff. Feeling underappreciated, F.U. also is looking around for some foreign fun that would indelibly imprint him on the realm, something along the lines of the Falklands that worked so well for Maggie.

With Mike Vardy directing effectively, Andrew Davies again delivers a script of unflattering dark satire that exposes the entrails of government and salons of influence, where insincere smiles and hollow laughter thicken the political hypocrisy, where cynical games and class snootiness drive the parliamentary debates of “right honorable gentlemen,” where F.U.’s tight-lipped, pale-eyed, arch-browed guile and malevolence pollute the House of Commons.

Yet his skin has thinned with age, and increasingly the evil seems almost to bleed through his rigid mask. You see it as mutually wary and cunning F.U. and Claire match wits in his office--craftily directed, suspenseful theater that has them mentally circling and frisking each other en route to an uneasy, pivotal alliance. “She moves so easily from camp to camp,” he observes, at once suspicious and admiring.

Performances in “The Final Cut” are consistently strong, with Blair, as Claire, especially artful in support of the versatile, Emmy Award-worthy Richardson. An undersung actor outside of England, he again is simply the grandest of cads.

“How do you feel about me now?” F.U. asks the camera. Never better, which makes saying goodbye all the more difficult.

* “The Final Cut” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28. It airs Tuesday and Feb. 13 at 9 p.m. on KOCE-TV Channel 50.