TV Review: The Final Cut (1995)

The Final Cut (1995) written by Andrew Davies from the novel by Michael Dobbs and directed by Mike Vardy

Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson) wants to leave a leadership legacy and has worked on a peace accord between Turkish and Greek Cyprus. Unfortunately (but typically), his motivation is tainted. He wants to be more historically famous than Margaret Thatcher and he plans to take advantage of some Cypriot off-shore oil to secure his financial future. His main opponents are two. First is political opponent Makepeace (Paul Freeman) who is Foreign Minister but opposes Urquhart's cold and calculating attitudes. Second is Maria Passolides (Yolanda Vazquez), whose father had two brothers killed in the 1950s in a war on Cyprus. The dad suspects Urquhart killed them. Viewers know he did because he has flashbacks of killing two young men and burning their bodies. The fly in the ointment is Claire Carlson (Isla Blair) who is Makepeace's lover but also advisor to Urquhart. Urquhart wants to use her relationship to get dirt on Makepeace. Makepeace is an upstanding guy (sort of) who quits his job and goes for the party leadership, and possibly the office of Prime Minister too. As things spiral out of control, can Urquhart succeed?

The show adds some new ghosts haunting Urquhart, the Cypriot nationals he killed. Those memories are paralleled with the Mattie's death from the first series, making the two memories roughly equal though apparently he didn't remember his earlier crimes till this series. He's also obsessed with lasting longer than Margaret Thatcher, for whom he has nothing but contempt. He hints that his relationship with Claire will be exploitative (including sexually) but nothing comes of it, probably because she's pretty busy in the bedroom with Makepeace (with a surprising number of topless scenes). Her playing both sides is more interesting than Urquhart's manipulation of situations. Richardson is still great in the role but the script for this series has run out of good ideas. The ending is abrupt and not convincing or satisfying, lowering the overall series into just another political drama. The first series is well worth watching; this series is more for completists.

Mildly recommended.

As with the other series, I watched on Hoopla through a library account.