The House That Netflix Built

Tomorrow is the day that Netflix unveils a brand new season of Arrested Development, seven years after the series was cancelled by FOX. I've been eagerly looking forward to the new episodes, and prepping for all the callback humor by rewatching the entire series from the beginning. But another way that I've been passing the long wait is watching Netflix's first foray into original programming, House of Cards.

House of Cards is an adaptation of a 1990s BBC show (itself an adaptation of a series of novels) about corruption in politics. Kevin Spacey stars as an ambitious congressman with elaborate machinations to amass more power and move up in the ranks. Two women in his life are equally driven and shark-like: his scheming, Lady Macbeth-style wife played by Robin Wright, and a young and impatient reporter played by Kate Mara. There's also great acting from Corey Stoll (who impressed as Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris) and Constance Zimmer (who never really got much to do during her run on the David Kelley series Boston Legal).

Add to this impressive stable of actors a solid team behind the camera. The producer and director of the first two episodes is David Fincher, the dark visionary behind Se7en, Fight Club, and more. His presence in turn attracted a number of other high caliber directors with a number of HBO series under their belts. (And also Joel Schumacher, the man who brought nipples to the Batsuit in Batman and Robin -- but he doesn't do anything horrible here.)

Liberated from commercials, and from having an audience who would be forced to wait a week between episodes, House of Cards is a bit different than anything else on TV. Its protagonist is truly not a good guy, which calls to mind the brief brilliant-but-cancelled series Profit. Spacey's character narrates directly at the camera and the audience, a convention almost never seen outside of theater. Episodes are routinely peppered with unexplained scenes that establish tone and metaphor, in ways more typical of a novel. There's a little something of everything in the mix here.

Most of the time, the mix is very effective. The series is compelling to watch, and you easily find yourself rooting for someone who would be the villain in any other tale -- even when he goes too far over the line. But there is occasionally a price for being this experimental. A mid-season episode, for example, in which Spacey's character returns to his college and reunites with old friends is painfully dry, and contributes almost nothing to the ongoing narrative established to that point. Also, the breathlessly paced finale still manages to disappoint a bit by teeing up a lot of exciting threads without delivering on many of them. That element -- a cliffhanger ending -- is all too much like traditional television.

The good news is, House of Cards was bought out of the gate by Netflix with a minimum two season commitment, and that second season is being filmed right now. At some point down the road, I'll be diving into the continued twisted adventures of Frank Underwood. Before then, you should definitely consider catching up yourself. I'd give the first season of House of Cards is a B+ overall.