House of Cards is not an isolated phenomenon. Despite the glut of television series that deal in Washington intrigue, genuine political satire is remarkably hard to find. There’s farce (Alpha House), drama (The Americans), and farce masquerading as drama—with more self-awareness in some cases (Scandal) than in others (Homeland, State of Affairs). The past few years have seen two series about a female secretary of state inspired by Hillary Clinton (Political Animals, with Sigourney Weaver, and Madam Secretary, with Téa Leoni). And yet viewers looking for political fare with a real comic edge have had nowhere to go but HBO’s Veep, an Americanized variation of the British series The Thick of It imported to our shores by the original’s creator, the Scotsman Armando Iannucci. What is it that the Brits understand about this enterprise that we Americans don’t?

Let’s begin with House of Cards, which reveals what happens when dark political satire makes its way across the Atlantic. The BBC version, adapted from a novel by the former Thatcher adviser Michael Dobbs, describes the swift rise to power of Francis Urquhart, played with lupine relish by the great Ian Richardson, a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. An old-moneyed conservative and the chief whip of the Tory government, Urquhart at the outset is content with his job keeping the parliamentary troops in line—“putting a bit of stick about,” in his indelible phrasing. But when he is denied an anticipated promotion, he begins a vengeful quest that will win him the prime ministership by the end of the four-episode miniseries. (House of Cards is the first in a trilogy that also includes To Play the King and The Final Cut.)

Willimon’s translation to contemporary Washington is faithful enough to these narrative particulars. In Urquhart’s place, we have Francis “Frank” Underwood (Spacey), the Democratic House majority whip from South Carolina. Similarly slighted for higher office, he pursues a similar course of revenge, one that will eventually require a relocation up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.

Tonally, however, the two shows are like night and day, except the BBC version is simultaneously lighter and darker. Richardson imbues Urquhart with a Mephistophelian glee. There is a winking naughtiness in his frequent asides, when he breaks down the fourth wall to bring viewers into his venal confidence. The glint is there, too, in his knowing refrain to the media: “You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment.” But Urquhart is not to be mistaken for a rootless schemer. A bred-in-the-bone conservative, he is the embodiment of an ancient and ominous sensibility—a force as much cultural as political, and at war with modernity itself. This is a man who goes so far as to rebuke the king of England: “My family came south with James I. We were defenders of the English throne before your family was ever heard of.” Urquhart’s shadow looms over Westminster like Smaug’s over the Lonely Mountain.