The Weekend Playlist: Cards Sharks on Netflix, Super Bowl Weekend
"I have no patience for useless things." The Machiavellian politician making this pronouncement, in the sinister opening scene of Netflix's instantly gripping shot-across-the-bow miniseries House of Cards, is Francis Underwood (a perfectly reptilian Kevin Spacey). On the surface, he's a team player, a powerful House of Representatives leader in the cynical snake pit of Washington, D.C. The conceit of House of Cards, as it was in the brilliant Emmy-winning 1990 British classic this is based on (first seen in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theater), takes us behind Underwood's mask to reveal the manipulative monster within, a voracious tyrant who doesn't suffer fools gladly and takes no prisoners in his predatory pursuit of power.
