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Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards, season three
Trying to extend their stay in the White House: Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards, season three. Photograph: David Giesbrecht
Trying to extend their stay in the White House: Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards, season three. Photograph: David Giesbrecht

It’s the return of House of Cards – but where can Frank go now?

This article is more than 9 years old
At last, the third series of the US version of this intelligent political exposé is out on Netflix

The rain it raineth on the just, and on the unjust, fella. I won’t complete the rhyme, but in Britain this wet weekend there will be a good many couples getting down and dirtily duvet-hunkered, thanks to the long-awaited Netflix release of House of Cards series three.

There have been rational objections to it being released only on Netflix. Some dislike being forced to watch on small computer screens when there’s a perfectly lush, plasmatic greed-screen sitting uselessly in the corner (though a Chromecast dongle can fix that).

Some will bicker over whether to binge-watch the full 13 episodes (all released at once) or ration themselves – ah, the tyranny of choice – to a scheduled weekly slot. I’d prefer the latter, but I once occupied myself throughout a surprisingly dull (the view for five days was of small, unhappily damp birch trees) trans-Siberian luxury train journey by watching the entire box-set of the seventh season of The West Wing, so what do I know? Still, hey, it’s the (or one) way forward, and mention of The West Wing brings me to my point: what’s it like?

The fact that it has already won two Emmys and three Golden Globes, and along the way established Netflix, still only six years old, as a big contender in the metamorphising TV marketplace, should speak volumes. And, yes, it’s great. Adapted from the original British early-90s series of the same name, but moved to Washington and starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, it’s every bit as much as all those adjectives applied to the first – machiavellian, dysfunctional, cynical – but even darker, in every sense. Spacey’s character Frank Underwood has, in his political clawing to the very top – he’s now in the Oval Office – already pushed a reporter under a subway train, engineered the suicide of a congressman and enjoyed a bout of troilism.

Strangely, now that he’s actually there, he seems, bizarrely, to want to do good. This was allegedly part of the problem with the actual opening episode. Some have complained that, with the glittering prize of Potus, the presidency of the free world, already in his hands, the writers have left him with unattainable ambitions, for where exactly do you go from there? There are benefits to the only way being up.

But Underwood, of course, didn’t get to the Oval Office except by default, by ousting an incumbent in his spirited weasel fashion, and now has a limited span till the next election. And fierce problems with Russia, whose president Victor Petrov (would any Russian president really have those initials?) is due shortly to visit, with interesting developments for Underwood’s wife (Wright); and a Republican Congress is blocking his every move; and his ratings are disastrous; and he’s lost his chief of staff. And the Democratic party leaders want him to stand down.

He deals with all of this in suitably Frank fashion. That is, you can see the brain whirring in every shot and coming up with every possible solution, other than the honest one. The loyal chief of staff returns, limping from hospital, only to find he’s been thoroughly replaced (though mark my words, Doug Stamper will be back, and hell will hath no fury). Underwood launches an apparently virtuous and impossibly ambitious campaign to get every American back to work, and essentially bullies his entire team into accepting it, despite their wheedles (“Sir, we can do a version of that.” “I don’t want a VERSION. I want a vision.”) You truly see the skull beneath the skin, not least when he’s railing against benefits (entitlements) sucking 44% from every tax dollar.

For a Democrat, he’s far from the sainted Jed Bartlet. Welcome echoes from The West Wing return, not least in this show’s ability to focus unashamedly on a minor point of legislation on which major principles turn. But Frank (in whose hands, the way they turn is dirty) is an equally grand creation, brought to life magnificently by Spacey. Subtly and luminously shot in 50 shades of you-know-what, this is a wonderfully intelligent exposition of all worldwide politics. Frank will win, but not nicely. Simply because, as I said, the rain it raineth on the just, and on the unjust, fella. But mainly on the just, because the unjust stole the just’s umbrella.

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