Political

House of Cards Season 3: best watched the old-fashioned way.

House of Cards Season 3 - DVD coverAfter the first two cracking seasons, House of Cards Season 3 is a more hit and miss affair, best watched spaced out over time rather than binging on many episodes in one go.

That’s because in Season 3 there is rather less political machinations than previously and rather more emphasis on the characters, especially the disintegrating Underwood marriage. However the character development is done rather unevenly, with some abrupt changes in course which you really notice if watching too many episodes too close to each other.

One of Underwood’s rivals, for example, changes into a character with a strong dose of megalomania – a plausible shift in abstract but rather than done over several episodes in an engrossing development, instead concentrated into one brief part of one scene as if it was a tick box exercise of ‘remember throw in a few lines before the ad break to show the character has changed’.

It’s also as if too much emphasis is given to the smattering of would-be epic scenes, with great acting, lighting and direction to go with them, but with rather sparse pickings in between them. It’s like watching someone living their life switching from one pose for the cameras to another – each pose may be done well but there’s something rather missing from them if that’s all they do without anything much in-between.

So my advice: watch Season 3 of House of Cards the old-fashioned way – one episode a week and let your memory fade a little between the shows to cover up the lack of proper filling between the set piece moments. That way you’ll really get to enjoy the continuing class acting and very stylish mix of camerawork and lighting, along with a fair degree of fun and, at its best, moments of high tension and uncertainty.

If you like this, you might also be interested in House of Cards, Season 1.

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Buy House of Cards Season 3 here.

Note: a review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher.

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