First day of the new year I barely left my bed. Full on lazy day with a House of Cards marathon that lasted 6 hours followed by the new Sherlock. I can’t think of a better way to spend my day.
House of Cards reminds me of a darker, dirtier version of the West Wing seen not from the top but from the middle trying to climb their way up. I don’t mean to compare House of Cards with the West Wing just because it has white house politics in common, and I am fully aware that is a remake of a British series with the same name but sadly I’ve not seen said series to make any kind of comparison. What I like about House of Cards is that you see how each decision, each double cross, effects all the players from within the white house to those in the press and beyond that.
Despite Francis being quite possibly the actual devil you find yourself rooting for him to succeed. There is something quite captivating to see the master manipulator in action and seeing it all come to fruition, even when it doesn’t go to plan you know he has a way to bring it all back on track. Francis is playing chess, being 3 steps ahead of everybody and envisioning the whole chess board as he plays the people on it. Whilst those he’s manipulating can only see themselves and the moves that they make alone. The most telling of this is when an opponent Spinella tries to out manipulate the master manipulator and fails spectacularly. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the remaining 4 episodes holds.
To me the return of Sherlock was just as I imagined it would be and then some. Mark Gatiss is a brilliant writer, the script was smart, suspenseful and funny. A nice wink to the Sherlock fandom, specifically the obsessive fan fic writing kind. I also loved his performance as Mycroft. As much as I love the Sherlock/Holmes dynamic, there’s something that has to be said about Sherlock and Mycroft. Gatiss in an interview compared Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationship to that of Frasier and Niles Crane and I couldn’t agree more. I understand the reason why there is such a big rift in the Elementary version but even so I much prefer the brotherly dynamic in Sherlock. I have found there is a lot of talk, on Twitter mainly, of being a fan of one or the other. Personally I am a fan of both in equal measures, I appreciate what each of them bring to the table and I think Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch are brilliant Sherlock’s.
Next up on my TV viewing will be to finish up this current season of House of Cards and then may be start a mammoth series from scratch, one that I have yet to see…maybe Lost..
And yes I did have to read through the entire post to make sure I wrote House of Cards and not House of Lies, which by the way is also brilliant and well worth checking out.
Minudrome 