House of Cards

Started to broadcast at February 1, 2013.

Drama / TV-Series (2013)

A Congressman works with his equally conniving wife to exact revenge on the people who betrayed him.

In the entirely different political climate of early 2013, Barack Obama was starting his second term as president and “House of Cards,” Netflix’s first original series, premiered as the Washington show of the moment. Things have changed, to say the very least.

Now the painfully protracted, often overwritten, covertly Shakespearean melodrama comes to an end, at last, with the release of Season 6 on Friday, while the rest of us keep shuffling toward the end of the world. Besides noting “House of Cards'” role in the streaming-TV revolution, there’s not much left to say about it, besides good riddance to its perpetual notion that Washington only works when Washington is cruel.

Even with the topically on-point crisis – some would say gift – of having to fire its star, Kevin Spacey (amid allegations of sexual assault), and replace him with the show’s far more interesting co-star and character (Robin Wright as the newly-sworn, stainless-steel President Claire Underwood), “House of Cards” had already drifted hopelessly away from any kind of resonance or plausibility. Even as a hate-watch it had stopped delivering.

Creator: Beau Willimon
Stars: Kevin Spacey, Michel Gill, Robin Wright