House of Cards

[Dowdsy McDowds]

In what is quite an original move, Netflix have launched their own original series this weekend. House of Cards has a strong cast, with Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Kate Mara being the main players so far, but Spacey is also listed as an Executive Producer as well as a certain David Fincher who directs a couple of episodes.

There will perhaps be some similarities drawn between this and both The West Wing and The Thick Of It, though I have only seen the latter so I could be wrong about West Wing.
In House of Cards, Spacey is the majority whip in the House of Representatives and had been promised the role of Secretary of State in the run up to the election, only for the now President to reneg on the deal. With this bee in his bonnet, he begins to start making plans for shaping the Government to fit his vision by leaking certain policies and items to a young reporter, played by Kate Mara.

I've only seen 2 episodes so far but both have been very impressive, with Spacey capturing a lot of the sneaky bastard elements you would expect. He frequently breaks the 4th wall to either let the viewer in on what he is planning or explain something about another character.

All the episodes are up on Netflix now so it's worth checking out if you have access to it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/

 

[Slyfox696]

I've been very interested in this, and received the e-mail last night that it was now available. It'll be interesting to see how Netflix original programming works out.

As much as a I hate to say it, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see advertising start coming to Netflix. They've paid a LOT for this show.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

That seems quite likely to be honest, in terms of the advertising. I know they've been relatively successful in the UK but I guess it depends mainly on how well they do in the US to determine what they do about introducing adverts.

An on demand service in the UK for Channel 4 is notorious for being horrendous with regards to their adverts during streams. I think it averages an advert every 6 minutes or so.

I wasn't aware until an advert on TV last night that Netflix was doing exclusive content. Do you know of any other shows in the pipeline or are they waiting to see the reaction House of Cards gets?

 

[Slyfox696]

Do you know of any other shows in the pipeline or are they waiting to see the reaction House of Cards gets?

I believe they'd like to, but they'll see how House of Cards goes, I believe.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

Halfway through the series just now and I'm still very impressed with this show. Episode 5 has a great moment where Robin Wrights character, Claire, finally opens up about her personality as up until then she seems to be a very guarded and intriguing character. However that could be down to her lack of facial expressions, so you never get much of an insight into what she's thinking.

Spacey continues to impress, despite a bit of a weird accent. His ongoing battle with the leader of the teachers' union has some terrific moments, including a tv debate that goes wrong and subsequent social media fallout.

I just want to mention how great 2 of the supporting players have been; Michael Kelly who plays Douglas Stamper, Spacey's number 2, and Corey Stoll who plays Peter Russo, an aspiring Congressman.
Russo is the character who is undergoing the biggest character arc so far, but I don't want to spoil anything. Both Russo and Stamper appear in a meeting where Stamper delivers a great mini speech that reveals a part of his past and just how determined his character is.

Again, I highly recommend that this show be checked out as the supporting cast around Spacey definitely deserve some attention and praise.

 

[justinsayne]

Do you know of any other shows in the pipeline or are they waiting to see the reaction House of Cards gets?

They've done this before with a show called Lilyhammer, that stars Steven Van Zandt as a ex-gangster who enters witness protection & is sent to Norway, where shit happens. It came out last year, I couldn't tell you if it's any good or not as I've never watched it, but they're filming the second season of it now.

They're also planning of doing this with the new season of Arrested Development that is set to come out this summer (I think), & I'm pretty sure they have a few other shows in the pipeline as well.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

They've done this before with a show called Lilyhammer, that stars Steven Van Zandt as a ex-gangster who enters witness protection & is sent to Norway, where shit happens. It came out last year, I couldn't tell you if it's any good or not as I've never watched it, but they're filming the second season of it now.

They're also planning of doing this with the new season of Arrested Development that is set to come out this summer (I think), & I'm pretty sure they have a few other shows in the pipeline as well.

I've been meaning to check that out for a while. I think that might have been shown on one of the BBC channels in the UK, but I could be thinking of something else.

That Arrested Development rumour rings a bell. Last I heard there had been talk of it being available to stream but I didn't pay attention as to who would be providing it. Cheers!

 

[It's Damn Real!]

I finally decided after months of indecision to watch this a few weeks ago over a weekend, and I'm really glad I did. Spacey's work on this is absolutely fantastic. Easily one of the best villain roles he's performed.

The writing for this is exceptional, and the casting is vastly underrated with a lot of really well-cast performers for the lesser roles like Corey Stoll (Peter Russo), Michael Kelly (Doug Stamper) and Robin Wright (Carrie Underwood [LOL]).