House of Cards: Season 2 (2014)

Season 2 of House of Cards is every bit as fascinating as season 1, opening with the shocking incident that closed the first season of the original – one of the many ways in which the Netflix model changes the pace and position of climactic sequences – and building to an extraordinary, cinematic finale at Camp David. This time around, Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, is making a bid for the Presidency, and he’s every bit as Machiavellian and Shakespearean as ever. However, the season really belongs to Claire, his wife, who’s played by Robin Wright. She was stunning from the very beginning of the show, but she eclipses even Frank here, drawing on her consummate PR skills to become the public face of the relationship as his political star starts to soar. Part of what makes Claire so compelling is that she’s never presented as a contradiction – there is no tension between her exquisite sympathy and her mercenary neoliberalism, between the non-profit organisation where she spends most of her time and the lengths she’s prepared to go to get what she wants. Like Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis, she exudes an alien subjectivity reared on corporate charity, incapable of distinguishing – or needing to distinguish – between her most cultivated and brutal intentions. That makes her quite sublime, suddenly remote when she seems to be most immediate, and strangely intimate when she seems to be most mercenary. Unlike Frank, she is devoid of even the slightest trace of duplicity, conscious or otherwise – there is no sense that she is concealing a better or worse self beneath her sleek, streamlined surface, no sense that she is dissembling or even registers any need to dissemble. Instead, she is all surface, and that works perfectly with Wright’s extraordinary face, which has reached just the right pitch of angularity to throw its natural beauty into stark relief, to the point where a single stare or glance seems to offer both infinite sympathy and infinite indifference. Even Frank is in awe of her, while the series is even more fascinated with the rites and rituals of their relationship than the first. That, in turn, means even more attention to their brooding house, which is reconstructed in the aftermath of a serious security threat, and starts to populate itself with their peculiar idea of family. And this season’s fixation with family, longevity and legacy is perhaps what sets it apart from the first, which felt more like an extravagant experiment, an audacious gesture to redefine television and cinema as we know it. Season 2 is more confident in its achievements, but it's also more anxious to build them into a spectacular third season, and to cement one of the most incredible television experiences in recent years.