House of Cards meets Borgen in a planned new BBC TV Westminster thriller.
The Club has been created jointly by Michael Dobbs, whose novel House of Cards was turned into a BBC1 hit before being transported to America by Netflix, and Adam Price, the Danish screenwriter, whose Nordic-noir drama about a female prime minister, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, became a surprise global hit.
The original House of Cards starred Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart, the Tory chief whip who schemes his way into No 10, while the US version plotted the bloody ascent of the Underwoods, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, to the White House. The fifth US series began streaming last week.
The Club tells of a woman who succeeds her husband as a Labour MP after he meets a sticky end. The party is in opposition and its MPs are squabbling. Kudos, the company producing it for the BBC, says it is “quite dark, and shows up all the games played at Westminster”.
The Club, while overseen by Dobbs and Price, is being written by Mick Ford, the actor-turned-screenwriter whose credits include Single Father, which starred David Tennant, and William and Mary, with Martin Clunes.