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Was Mattie's Death Premeditated? (Spoiler Alert)

posted 8 years ago by amyghost
8 replies | jump to latest

I wonder how many fans of the series think Urquhart's murder of Mattie Storin had been decided upon by him beforehand, and how many think it was the impulse of a moment when she let it be known that she knew the truth about Roger's death?

Clearly Roger's killing was very much premeditated on FU's part, needing to get rid of an unstable accomplice who was becoming more and more of a liability; but Mattie's dispatch feels to me more like a desperate act, born out of fear that, no matter their relationship, he can't trust her to keep his secrets now that he's finally gained the thing he wanted most: becoming Prime Minister.

On the other hand, we could also speculate that Mattie was becoming something of an inconvenience herself--a mistress whose feelings may have started becoming too involved, and who may have threatened to start becoming too importunate in her demands on him. In short, the sort of mistress a man in a very high office can't afford to have around. So could we read into this the possibility that FU might have been considering that Mattie had to go even before she made that fateful appearance on the rooftop?

[–] dmyriounis 8 years ago

My reading of his facial expressions and lines betray the following thought-process:

Ηe was torn between keeping Mattie on as a lover/political accomplice and dispensing with her as she got more and more emotionally involved in him, at least since the beginning of the episode. The decision to throw her off the terrace was a spontaneous one, when he chose the latter based on his intuition that though she pledged her loyalty to him she became increasingly unstable and unreliable. The method of the murder and the location were not premeditated, though I am certain Urquhart would have a contingency in place for disposing of Mattie when he would ultimately choose to.

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

Thanks for the response.

I agree, I think the actual killing was more born of the moment, but a case could certainly be made for the idea that, even had Mattie kept her knowledge to herself and her mouth shut, Urquhart would probably still have ended up having her disposed of in some manner--though likely a less risky one than pitching her from a roof, where he might have easily been seen. Her demise would more likely have come in the form of something like Sarah's in To Play the King, with someone else actually doing the deed, acting on FU's behest.

It is obvious that Mattie is passing from the affair's being a purely lustful episode on her part--she tells John near the end of the last episode that she's in love with Francis, something we've not heard her say before; and in the final scene of Episode 3, as she's seductively asking Francis if he wishes his wife were away so she could stay the night with him, it's plain enough from his unspoken reaction that he's already beginning to sense she's a potential nuisance and threat both to his marriage (which is a lot more important to him than Mattie realizes) and to his aspirations. We can almost sense that her fate at his hands isn't going to be a good one no matter what--she simply puts him in the position of having to do the deed in a more dangerous and forthright manner than he might have intended had he been given more time. So, although her revelation to him about the facts of Roger's demise serve to bring about her death more abruptly, she'd have likely ended up dead sooner or later anyway: too risky to have around, and too risky to simply be cut loose and left to go public with her story.

[–] combatreview 8 years ago

>>>a case could certainly be made for the idea that, even had Mattie kept her knowledge to herself and her mouth shut, Urquhart would probably still have ended up having her disposed of in some manner

I think that's right. Both his later development as a character, and his overt Shakespearian antecedents, seem to make it clear that even close allies are ultimately a danger to be eliminated.

That said, Mattie's murder is clearly a trauma to him and certainly not premeditated at that moment - and as such is rather more interesting, dramatically, not least because of the questions that go unanswered as a result.

For example - I have a suspicion that Mattie (for all that she is our heroine) would not necessarily have turned on Frances after learning the truth. I think it's just possible that she would have 'turned to the dark side' at this point. I always thought she was slightly more interesting than she might have been precisely because of her susceptibility to Urquhart's charisma, and the hints of her corruptibility.

One of the things (few though they were) I didn't like about the later series was the degree to which the Urquhart's were effectively dictators having their enemies professionally rubbed out all over the place. When the line of murder was crossed in the original series, we felt it more because it was definitely a radical step for Frances - and for us, who had accompanied him on his scheme of jolly japes sabotaging the corrupt, the inept and the hypocritical. When murder becomes part of his way of business, it is so very much harder to be close to the character in the way that was so effective in the first series.

Anyway, the impulsive murder of Mattie is much more emotionally impactful than a cold-hearted assassination would have been, for us as well as for Frances. Not to mention, he would never have got to hear her scream 'daddy' as she fell...

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

Good reply; I agree that his murder of Mattie in that manner, at that particular moment, is born out of fear and impulse...but I still can't help but wonder if the idea that she will have to be got rid of in some manner has not already begun to form with him, before that moment. That idea might just have made it easier for him to act than it may have been otherwise, though clearly not so easily that it hasn't left him with his own psychological wounds as a result.

Could it be those wounds that, in part, explain his increasing ruthlessness? To the point that, as you say, in the final series, he's become virtually Don Corleone, having any opposition eliminated through murder--having crossed the line via a cold-blooded, if impulsive, murder of the one person who might have touched his more humane side, it could be that Urquhart decides that there's now nothing to stand in the way of his going all the way--if he could kill Mattie (his 'daughter') he can kill anyone, and why not? It might even be his way of dealing with the demons Mattie's killing have unleashed in him.

I agree also that The Final Cut takes him to the extreme, and to such an extent that it can become difficult to relate to the character, but, although not handled as skillfully as it could have been, I think that might be part of the point--no matter how immured in his dark side Urquhart becomes, we the audience still can't entirely turn away from him...maybe in the process revealing a bit of our own 'dark sides' as well.

[–] combatreview 8 years ago

>>>I still can't help but wonder if the idea that she will have to be got rid of in some manner has not already begun to form with him, before that moment

Reasonably so. If Frances hasn't already got there by that point, then I'm sure his wife has. Mind you, I think in that first series there's also a sense that murder is still a drastic option not least because it runs the risk of creating additional complications and risks. Roger was murdered because of the risk he represented now that he was uncontrollable, unstable. Mattie's curiosity was a problem but she could be spiked and marginalised by a number of other, less dramatic, methods which I'd suggest were the furthest the Urquharts were planning at that point, and only then as a matter of necessity.

I seem to recall that the Urquharts deliberately wind in Mattie for their own purposes, so she would have been a disposable asset from the first - but it's worth noting that Roger's murder is, in the first series, an extreme and unusual tactic for Frances. Mostly he destroys through shame and humiliation, and it's clear throughout the series that Mattie's career could be crushed in a second if Frances wanted it.

>>>Could it be those wounds that, in part, explain his increasing ruthlessness?

Well, it's often said that once a sin is committed it becomes easier to contemplate repeat offences...

>>>To the point that, as you say, in the final series, he's become virtually Don Corleone

On the other hand, outside of the narrative it's worth considering that the creative forces behind each series were shifting considerably. Andrew Davies has suggested that he didn't think too much of Michael Dobbs' book, and I'm sure you're aware that it was Davies, not Dobbs, who gave us the ending where Mattie is murdered and Frances lives to appear in a sequel, the affair between Mattie and Frances, and of course that conspiratorial relationship between Frances and the audience. Dobbs has, I understand, retro-fitted these back into his books, but they come from Davies.

As the show progressed through it's three incarnations, they became more and more the work of Andrew Davies to the extent that Michael Dobbs insisted his name be taken off of the third show - I seem to remember it was the scene of Thatcher's funeral that did it.

My suspicion, therefore, is that Andrew Davies' own political perspective becomes more and more pronounced as the series continues. Therefore, his depiction of a Tory prime-minister as a wicked dictator is likely to be satirically extreme, a burst of post-Thatcher anger.

At the time of first transmission, I remember thinking that To Play the King actually felt a tiny bit like dystopian science-fiction - they appeared to be set several years ahead of the time of transmission, with a government a bit more repressive and dangerous than it seemed to be in reality. Indeed, when The Final Cut was transmitted, about 18 months before the final collapse of a Tory government that had been in place since 1979, it felt a lot like the show was dancing on the grave of a doomed establishment. Mind you, ten years down the line I found myself wondering if Tony Blair had plans to, Urquhart-style, outlast Thatcher by one day if at all possible...

Anyway - so, I think the step the show takes by having assassination become normal seems, to me, to be a deliberate parodic barb being thrown at a government that had perhaps been no stranger to repressive tendencies in its reign.

This does little to justify the shift within the narrative, of course, and your own explanation is as good as any I might suggest.

>>>I think that might be part of the point--no matter how immured in his dark side Urquhart becomes, we the audience still can't entirely turn away from him...maybe in the process revealing a bit of our own 'dark sides' as well.

This is a very good point - he remains magnetic, even when we see the rather ugly face he shows to other people. Mind you, there's also a question as to how much this would even begin to work if it weren't for Ian Richardson...

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

At the time of first transmission, I remember thinking that To Play the King actually felt a tiny bit like dystopian science-fiction - they appeared to be set several years ahead of the time of transmission, with a government a bit more repressive and dangerous than it seemed to be in reality. Indeed, when The Final Cut was transmitted, about 18 months before the final collapse of a Tory government that had been in place since 1979, it felt a lot like the show was dancing on the grave of a doomed establishment. Mind you, ten years down the line I found myself wondering if Tony Blair had plans to, Urquhart-style, outlast Thatcher by one day if at all possible...

Anyway - so, I think the step the show takes by having assassination become normal seems, to me, to be a deliberate parodic barb being thrown at a government that had perhaps been no stranger to repressive tendencies in its reign.

Funny you should say this, because, even as an American viewer I got much the same sense of this. Without using any overt 'props' to suggest the idea, TFC (and to some extent, To Play The King as well) did seem to have an air about it of being set slightly in the future, a sort of presage of 1984, if you will.

I've read the three Dobbs books, including the second, altered version of House of Cards, and yes--Davies clearly veered from much of Dobbs' narrative devices: To Play the King reserves little from the novel than the conceit of Urquhart's attempted coup de majeste; and although there are some bits I wish Davies had kept (the at-times Rabelasian sexual comedy between Francis and Sally Quine--Sarah Harding in the teleplay--was quite humorous, far more so than the rather bleak affair of power lust Davies turned it into) his choices were probably far more in keeping with the sort of vision he had in mind of a combination of dystopian horror story and satirical arse-kick to a despised government, as you point out.

he remains magnetic, even when we see the rather ugly face he shows to other people. Mind you, there's also a question as to how much this would even begin to work if it weren't for Ian Richardson...

I'm completely on board with you there. I'd mentioned in another thread that I thought Richardson was the only possible actor who could have so successfully conveyed this--the ability to draw the audience in and make them side with the character, even at his absolute worst. Interestingly, I've read that Dobbs had a very different physical sort in mind when he created Urquhart--a rather beefy, backslapping politician sort (rather like Patrick Wolton was in the teleplay)--and said he couldn't at all picture Richardson in the role. However, when Richardson read for the part, Dobbs did an about-face and was completely won over, to the extent that he re-tooled the Urquhart of the successive books to reflect more closely Richardson's interpretation of the character.

[–] combatreview 8 years ago

>>>even as an American viewer I got much the same sense of this. Without using any overt 'props' to suggest the idea, TFC (and to some extent, To Play The King as well) did seem to have an air about it of being set slightly in the future, a sort of presage of 1984, if you will.

As well as being British I did see these shows on first transmission... well, I missed House of Cards but caught the repeat which went out to stoke us up for To Play The King. Nonetheless, I was very aware of House of Cards when it went out, not least because it went from being a great drama to being talked of as uncannily well-timed.

I dare say the people who made the show had no expectation at all of events overtaking them - and with that in mind, I guess it was implicitly set a little way into 'the future', i.e. at some point yet to come when the glorious leader had finally left power. So the timing of Thatcher's resignation changed that show from feeling 'a few years away' to being up-to-the-moment instead.

>>>yes--Davies clearly veered from much of Dobbs' narrative devices

He's expressed his own lack of appreciation for the original novel - you may be aware that he was also behind the adaptation of Pride & Prejudice which was contemporary to The Final Cut (in fact, they shared the same Sunday night slot - P&P finished and was replaced the following week by The Final Cut). In one interview he referred to his two most high-profile works of adaptation as 'homage and redemption', pretty clearly indicating an appreciation of Austen and a differing view of Dobbs.

Also worth bearing in mind, Dobbs himself was rising in seniority within the Tory party during this period, so it was generally assumed that he couldn't afford to be as sharp or controversial at the end of the trilogy as he could at the outset. This likely combined with emphatically differing political perspectives of the two writers to ensure increasing divergence from books to adaptations. Certainly it's near-impossible to believe that Dobbs, by then chair of the Tory Party, would have endorsed, much less written the line uttered by Urquhart ostensibly about about his dog during Thatcher's funeral. I believe that was one of the reasons he had his name taken off the third series.

>>>there's also a question as to how much this would even begin to work if it weren't for Ian Richardson...
>>>I'm completely on board with you there. I'd mentioned in another thread that I thought Richardson was the only possible actor who could have so successfully conveyed this

Thing is, I'm sure there are several others who could have done a good job... but I can't name any right now.

However, FU has been played in a radio version of House of Cards by Daniel Massey (son of the great North American actor, Raymond), an actor that I've often regarded highly. However, I found his interpretation quite unenthusing. Then again, the adaptation itself was much more closely patterned on the original book - so, FU was inherently a less-appealing character without him providing us with the same genial company that Richardson did. All the same, this adaptation felt obliged to keep the Andrew Davies ending - which to me fell flat precisely because we lacked the investment in Urquhart that we'd had on television. It came across as a crude 'twist' ending, rather than the culmination of a man's internal conflicts and convolutions.

Actually... Pip Torrens' character was played on the radio by Anton Lesser. No there's an actor who'd make a brilliant Francis Urquhart, even if he perhaps lacks the physical stature for it.

>>>Interestingly, I've read that Dobbs had a very different physical sort in mind when he created Urquhart--a rather beefy, backslapping politician sort (rather like Patrick Wolton was in the teleplay)

In some senses perhaps more obviously 'modern Tory'. Richardson's FU has a rather Old World quality to him, he's very obviously a man who comes from an old family and old institutions. Woolton is much more risen-from-the-working-classes in style, more likely the descendent of a mill owner than of a Scottish aristocrat. It may just be my own prejudice, but Woolton stands as a rather vulgar figure by comparison, and somehow that plays into our suspicion that FU would be the best man for the job, way ahead of the obvious candidates.

>>>when Richardson read for the part, Dobbs did an about-face and was completely won over

I don't know if it's still there, but the original edition of the second book included a little note from the author, explaining how this book featured a main character who had died in the preceding novel. Certainly it's rather ironic that Dobbs wouldn't have been writing a sequel if Davies and Richardson hadn't shown him the error of his plotting decision.

And, indeed, it's tempting to observe that without Davies there would be no US series for Dobbs to profit from. It's rather ironic that his novels almost appear to have been adapted from their own adaptations...

Incidentally, for the sake of my dignity I'll openly confess my shame at making a silly mistake in the spelling of 'Frances' in my previous posts. I'm quite sure you didn't mind, but I don't want to look like I'm pretending I didn't do something that silly either..!

Incidentally, you may be interested by this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02sdcrx

BBC Radio has a regular feature called 'Inheritance Tracks'. A couple of years ago they did an eccentric experiment called 'Character Invasion Day' where fictional characters made appearances throughout the day's schedule. This included Francis Urquhart as guest on that day's 'Inheritance Tracks'. I believe it's still available as a download from that web page if it piques your curiosity. For my taste it's a bit too much of an 'origins of the monster' vignette, but it IS written by Michael Dobbs.

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

I dare say the people who made the show had no expectation at all of events overtaking them - and with that in mind, I guess it was implicitly set a little way into 'the future', i.e. at some point yet to come when the glorious leader had finally left power. So the timing of Thatcher's resignation changed that show from feeling 'a few years away' to being up-to-the-moment instead.

From what I've read, and what I know about semi-recent British political history (which isn't a great lot, I'll be the first to admit) the timing ended up being almost uncanny--sort of a 'god snaps his fingers' state of affairs...no doubt this resounded really strongly for British audiences of the time; a fact that an American can appreciate, without fully being able to get the total import of.

He's expressed his own lack of appreciation for the original novel - you may be aware that he was also behind the adaptation of Pride & Prejudice which was contemporary to The Final Cut (in fact, they shared the same Sunday night slot - P&P finished and was replaced the following week by The Final Cut). In one interview he referred to his two most high-profile works of adaptation as 'homage and redemption', pretty clearly indicating an appreciation of Austen and a differing view of Dobbs.

I did know about the contemporaneity between P&P and TFC--in fact I got a bit of a laugh watching Susannah Harker playing the gentle and virginal Jane, as it was a bit difficult to completely expunge the thought of her romping in bed with Daddy (thank heavens Ian didn't play Mr. Bennett, or god knows what sort of revising might have taken place, lol). Davies' less than high estimation for Dobbs' original novel hit our side of the pond a bit later--when the US version of HoC made its debut, there was a bit of the idea of all being sunshine and roses between the two men creatively speaking, and it wasn't until later that it became more apparent that Davies held the original written work in fairly low esteem--and even that fact wasn't much publicized here, you had to hunt online a bit to find out the extent of this. That homage and redemption quote makes it pretty staringly obvious just how poor an opinion Davies seems to have had of the book, and frankly I'm inclined to agree with him--next to his screenplay, that first book is a rather pedestrian job, not at all bad, but certainly without Davies/Richardson, it'd have likely sunk without much trace once the initial currency of events had passed it by.

I did know that Dobbs' position within the Tory party, as time went on, made it less possible for him to be as acute as he'd been in the first book--one reason I think he focused a bit more on the slightly farcical tone taken in To Play The King--the humor had to be veered away a trifle from the more trenchantly politically satirical, to the politics making a sort of backdrop to Urquhart's personal issues. The first airing of TPTK I saw had had the famous scene of Thatcher's funeral immediately followed by the line "she was a good bitch, but she had to go" excised, but I caught the full scene later on--I did know the history about this, and also the fact that Dobbs had his name pulled as a result, which came across to me as somewhat craven, but I suppose none too surprising, given where he was at in the party ranks by that time. It left no doubt that Davies meant to take a far more radical line than Dobbs was prepared to, or had in all probability even contemplated taking.

>>>there's also a question as to how much this would even begin to work if it weren't for Ian Richardson...
>>>I'm completely on board with you there. I'd mentioned in another thread that I thought Richardson was the only possible actor who could have so successfully conveyed this

Thing is, I'm sure there are several others who could have done a good job... but I can't name any right now.

However, FU has been played in a radio version of House of Cards by Daniel Massey (son of the great North American actor, Raymond), an actor that I've often regarded highly. However, I found his interpretation quite unenthusing. Then again, the adaptation itself was much more closely patterned on the original book - so, FU was inherently a less-appealing character without him providing us with the same genial company that Richardson did. All the same, this adaptation felt obliged to keep the Andrew Davies ending - which to me fell flat precisely because we lacked the investment in Urquhart that we'd had on television. It came across as a crude 'twist' ending, rather than the culmination of a man's internal conflicts and convolutions.

Actually... Pip Torrens' character was played on the radio by Anton Lesser. No there's an actor who'd make a brilliant Francis Urquhart, even if he perhaps lacks the physical stature for it.

There likely are some others who could have done a very good job with the character, but to be honest I'm less sure that any other could have made Urquhart as indelibly iconic as Richardson did. Admittedly, I'm biased, having been a tremendous admirer of his since the Seventies, when, as a drama-besotted teenager I first caught screenings of his performances in Marat/Sade and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I do think he's incomparable as an actor, and count it as one of the real regrets of my life that I was never able to see him in live performance (if I had that time machine everyone talks about, one of the first things I'd do would be to get front-row seats for Marat/Sade on the eve of its Broadway debut).

There are a couple of other specific names I could imagine doing a great job, just not to that extent. Lesser, I admit, is not someone I'd have thought of off the top of my head, but mulling it over, I can see where you'd picture him. As you say, lacks the stature, but then again, Ian was only 5'9", but managed to convey the sense of Urquhart's being a much more imposing figure physically--in fact it was a bit surprising in the one scene where he was next to Charles Villiers, to realize that he was under six feet, by a fair margin (of course Villiers was quite the beanpole, so it would have taken a very tall actor indeed not to have looked a bit dwarfed when posed right beside him). So the physical issue could likely be worked around, given the right actor. I keep meaning to check out the Massey performance in the radio version, as I like him also quite a lot, but it does sound, from your description, as if they'd muffed the script to a fair degree.

Miles Richardson has come to look enough like his father in latter years, that I'm surprised someone hasn't pitched him for a remake of the original (and if this were Hollywood, someone probably would have)--but I hope that's a bit of 'stunt casting' no one ever decides to go in for. What I've seen of him as an actor I like, so it's not that I feel he couldn't handle the role, but it would just feel too much like someone's idea of being clever.

I don't know if it's still there, but the original edition of the second book included a little note from the author, explaining how this book featured a main character who had died in the preceding novel. Certainly it's rather ironic that Dobbs wouldn't have been writing a sequel if Davies and Richardson hadn't shown him the error of his plotting decision.

And, indeed, it's tempting to observe that without Davies there would be no US series for Dobbs to profit from. It's rather ironic that his novels almost appear to have been adapted from their own adaptations...

I haven't seen that particular note, but I have read elsewhere Dobbs' mention of his bringing Francis back from the dead, and how the television adaptation significantly influenced his vision of his own character. I frankly think that Davies' decision to make Urquhart more decidedly Old World aristo was a wise one, and worked especially to advantage in To Play The King, where Urquhart's standing in that department gave an added dimension to the conflict--the 'man who would be king' (and who clearly thinks that, in a properly ordered world, he ought to have been) facing off against, what, to his mind, is a vulgar and rather ridiculous upstart, gave a real added dramatic wallop to the situation.

And absolutely, it's the teleplay that the US HoC draws from, rather more than the novels--though I have noted that Kev Spacey's Frank Underwood is a bit more closely related to the Urquhart of the books--drinks a lot, heavy smoker, swears like a stevedore--than Ian's more cultivated take on him was.

Incidentally, for the sake of my dignity I'll openly confess my shame at making a silly mistake in the spelling of 'Frances' in my previous posts. I'm quite sure you didn't mind, but I don't want to look like I'm pretending I didn't do something that silly either..!

LOL, no need to apologize! I've always been quick to catch the spelling because my mom's name was Frances, so since childhood I've known the difference--but it's a common mistake over here too, with the female spelling often confused for the masculine one. No problem at all, in fact, even with being near relations to a Frances, I sometimes have to catch myself on the 'i's' and 'e's' of it.

Thanks for pointing me to that BBC clip! Purely hilarious, and also spot-on for the super insight into the character--and I got a real laugh out of the little joke about Ramsay Macdonald, since Ian's portrayal of him in Number 10 is a favorite of mine; only having Ian 'round to read this could have made it better, though from what I gather, he was so over dear FU by the last series he probably couldn't have been had for love nor money to do it! (Even had he been with us.)