Programme notes

How House of Cards changed TV

Netflix's remake of a 1990 BBC thriller arrived all at once in February 2013 and reached the Emmys within months – here is how it happened, and what followed.

Published 4 October 2026

On 1 February 2013, Netflix put all 13 episodes of House of Cards online at the same moment. It was a political thriller with David Fincher behind the camera, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in front of it and a very British pedigree, and within eight months it had won an Emmy. It quickly became a test of whether a streaming service could be a serious home for drama.

A Westminster story first

The story began at Westminster, not Washington. Michael Dobbs's 1989 novel became a four-part BBC1 serial, adapted by Andrew Davies and shown between 18 November and 9 December 1990. Ian Richardson played Francis Urquhart, the Conservative chief whip who confides in the audience through the camera while he schemes his way to Downing Street. His deniable refrain – "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment" – was later borrowed in the House of Commons itself. Richardson won the BAFTA for best actor, and Davies won an Emmy for the writing.

Writing in The Guardian in 2013, Mark Lawson pointed out that the original went out on four consecutive Sunday evenings, so even its keenest fans waited three weeks for the ending. Its American successor would reach viewers very differently.

The 2011 deal

David Fincher came to the project after his agent showed him the BBC serial while he was finishing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The independent studio Media Rights Capital (MRC) held the rights and offered the project to HBO, Showtime and AMC, but Netflix, which wanted to start its own original programming, outbid them. Deadline later summed it up: Netflix had "surprised Hollywood in March" 2011 by beating the established networks.

The terms were unusual. Netflix ordered 26 episodes across two seasons without asking for a pilot, and it was the first time the service had commissioned a first-run series specifically for itself. Spacey was officially cast on 18 March 2011, and Wright joined as Claire Underwood that June. The writer Beau Willimon, a former political aide, moved the action to Washington and turned Urquhart into Frank Underwood, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina and House majority whip.

Everything at once

When the first season arrived, it arrived whole. HBO and Showtime released their dramas an episode a week; Netflix, which had noticed how often its subscribers watched several episodes in a row, made all 13 available on day one. Lawson called the decision "one of the biggest challenges in the medium's history to traditional patterns of production and consumption", while suspecting that most people would still watch in chunks.

Strictly speaking, the all-at-once release was not new. A year earlier Netflix had put all eight episodes of the Norwegian co-production Lilyhammer on the service at once. House of Cards was the first time it tried the approach with a high-end American drama of its own – what CNBC called Netflix's "first big debut in the premium original content space".

The Emmy breakthrough

On 18 July 2013, House of Cards received nine Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, lead-acting nominations for Spacey and Wright, and a directing nomination for Fincher. The Guardian reported that it was the first time an online-only show had been in the running for US television's top awards. Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, said: "It's as much a win for Internet television as it is for the content creators."

In September, Fincher won Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the opening episode, "Chapter 1". With two Creative Arts Emmys, including one for Eigil Bryld's cinematography, the first season won three awards from its nine nominations. In 2014 Wright won the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama series, the first actress to win a Golden Globe for an online-only series.

What it set in motion

Netflix kept going. Orange Is the New Black premiered in July 2013, and the revived Arrested Development picked up three Emmy nominations of its own that year. In November 2013 Netflix ordered a slate of Marvel series. By 2016 it had launched in 130 more countries and released an estimated 30 original series or films in a single year, more than any network or cable channel.

Rivals followed. Amazon premiered Alpha House in April 2013, and in January 2015 Transparent became the first series from a streaming service to win the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy series. British drama joined in too: Netflix released the first season of The Crown on 4 November 2016. You can trace those steps on our timeline and our Netflix page.

How it ended

The show's final chapter was overshadowed. In 2017, following allegations of sexual misconduct against Spacey, Netflix ended its relationship with him. The sixth and final season, eight episodes with Robin Wright in the lead, was made and released in 2018 without him.

How House of Cards changed TV

A Westminster story first

The 2011 deal

Everything at once

The Emmy breakthrough

What it set in motion

How it ended

Sources

More programme notes

BBC Three: the channel that went online

A short history of streaming in the UK

Lilyhammer: was it really Netflix's first original?