Unusual bedfellows make for great TV

Modern American politics and 1950s’ Ireland might not be the most obvious of bedfellows, but TV viewers will discover over the next few days that these seemingly diverse settings have much in common.

Season two of House of Cards on Netflix, and the inaugural run of an adaptation of the Quirke novels by Benjamin Black (John Banville) on RTÉ, are both laden with the darkness, lies and conspiracies of the worlds they inhabit.

For every conniving politician in Washington, there’s a ruthless cleric or self-serving medic in Dublin. And these people’s actions inevitably bring suffering on others. “I’ve never expected much from this world. It’s ugly, not a fair place,” says Rachel Posner, a former prostitute caught up in some of the dodgy deeds of House of Cards. She could just as easily have been speaking through the bars of the Magdalene laundry Gabriel Byrne’s character visits in the first episode of Quirke.