What the end of House of Cards means for binge-watch culture

In the wake of sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions made against Kevin Spacey, Net­flix have announced that the upcom­ing sixth sea­son of House of Cards will be the last. Pro­duc­tion in Bal­ti­more has been halt­ed, and it is cur­rent­ly unknown if the series’ swan­song will air as planned in mid-2018. This announce­ment was not met with much sur­prise by fans of the show, who had long-since sus­pect­ed that House of Cards had nowhere to go once Frank Underwood’s nefar­i­ous antics became increas­ing­ly believ­able in light of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Even so, the death of the OG Net­flix orig­i­nal does sug­gest impli­ca­tions for the binge-watch cul­ture which it helped to spawn.

There’s no deny­ing the wide-rang­ing influ­ence that House of Cards has had on the TV land­scape. Back in 2013, the reimag­in­ing of a lit­tle-known British show from the 1990s as a taut Amer­i­can polit­i­cal thriller star­ring Acad­e­my Award-win­ner Spacey played a big part in secur­ing Netflix’s future not only as a stream­ing giant, but as a viable con­tent cre­ator in its own right, rivalling the likes of stu­dio titans HBO and NBC.

Stream­ing plat­forms have so far been reliant on the nov­el­ty val­ue of drop­ping a whole series all at once to demand the atten­tion of view­ers. At first the busi­ness mod­el seemed pecu­liar, but audi­ence respons­es quick­ly prompt­ed oth­er plat­forms to fol­low suit and even cre­ate orig­i­nal con­tent for the express pur­pose of a series drop. The mar­vel of being able to con­sume a brand new sea­son or series months or even years in the mak­ing in the space of a sin­gle week­end is sat­is­fy­ing in its own right, and Net­flix in par­tic­u­lar have been able to ensure a cap­tive audi­ence by tim­ing the release of binge-wor­thy shows right, as in the case of Stranger Things 2’s time­ly arrival over Hal­loween weekend.

Pri­or to the dawn of online stream­ing and the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by binge-watch­ing, a series would typ­i­cal­ly play out over the course of weeks or even sev­er­al months. So-called ​‘water cool­er’ moments such as JR’s shoot­ing on Dal­las or The Sopra­nos’ unfor­get­table finale got their name from the excit­ed con­ver­sa­tion they sparked among office work­ers the morn­ing after the episode aired. Binge-watch­ing has undoubt­ed­ly altered the process by which we con­sume tele­vi­sion, with many ded­i­cat­ed fans rac­ing to get through hours of pro­gram­ming in as lit­tle time as pos­si­ble. Water cool­er moments no longer exist, as audi­ences con­sume shows at their own pace, and fear of spoil­ers lim­its word-of-mouth appeal.

With­out the old-school buffer peri­od of a week between episodes it’s hard to know how much of a series audi­ences are real­ly digest­ing, or if a show can have as much impact when it is just the lat­est offer­ing from a pro­duc­tion line of bulk-release series. Con­sid­er the shelf life of a box set series: after the ini­tial hype dies down, this can­not be repli­cat­ed across sub­se­quent sea­sons, even for flag­ship titles such as Stranger Things and Orange is the New Black. With social media often serv­ing as an echo cham­ber, and Net­flix tight-lipped on view­ing fig­ures, there’s an unde­ni­able poten­tial for series designed to be con­sumed in a short peri­od of time to fade into the inter­net ether.

Stu­dios have a solu­tion, and the grow­ing trend towards fran­chi­sa­tion of tele­vi­sion prop­er­ties runs in line with boxset cul­ture. Break­ing Bad’s stag­ger­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty came about after many view­ers dis­cov­ered it on catch-up and stream­ing ser­vices, and spawned AMC/​Netflix spin-off Bet­ter Call Saul. Sim­i­lar­ly, AMC’s binge-tas­tic The Walk­ing Dead led to Fear the Walk­ing Dead, and Net­flix is cur­rent­ly in talks to devel­op up to three House of Cards spin-off series, hop­ing to breathe new life into their estab­lished brand.

In fact, many stream­ing ser­vices have since opt­ed to tri­al week­ly releas­es, as Hulu did with The Handmaid’s Tale and Ama­zon and Net­flix do with syn­di­cat­ed con­tent such as Amer­i­can Gods and Riverdale. They have made their plat­forms a place which view­ers must return to week after week in order to access their con­tent, but more impor­tant­ly, while these series may have pre­vi­ous­ly only found a home on satel­lite chan­nels, afford­able online stream­ing ser­vices have made tele­vi­sion more acces­si­ble to audi­ences than ever before. Mean­while, tra­di­tion­al net­works look to a new breed of ​‘event tele­vi­sion’ attempt­ing to reject binge-watch­ing and catch-up cul­ture by broad­cast­ing to cin­e­mas, such as BBC’s Sher­lock and Doc­tor Who and Marvel’s Inhu­mans. Results have been mixed at best.

Increas­ing­ly Net­flix is look­ing to the oth­er arm of its orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming to attract con­ver­sa­tion. High-pro­file fea­ture film work with direc­tors includ­ing Noah Baum­bach, Bong Joon-ho and Angeli­na Jolie has been met with some resis­tance by the main­stream film world, with Bong’s Net­flix backed Okja receiv­ing boos from the audi­ence at its Cannes pre­mière. Despite remain­ing tight-lipped on their respec­tive plans for the future, Net­flix and their largest rival Ama­zon now seem inter­est­ed in pro­duc­ing pres­tige cin­e­ma that can com­pete with Hollywood.

While most titles are released direct-to-plat­form, Net­flix have also exper­i­ment­ed with giv­ing their films a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal run before mak­ing them avail­able online. Gone are the days when you had to catch a film at the cin­e­ma or else wait up to a year for the DVD or Blu-ray – with Net­flix, you might only have to wait a week. One upshot of this is that Net­flix have made cer­tain films more wide­ly acces­si­ble – par­tic­u­lar­ly in regions where the lat­est Baum­bach or Bong flick might not be show­ing – but it’s a dou­ble-edged sword. Take Mar­tin Scorsese’s high­ly antic­i­pat­ed The Irish­man, which was acquired by Net­flix ear­li­er this year. It’s hard to think of a more cin­e­mat­ic film­mak­er, and rec­on­cil­ing direc­to­r­i­al style with dis­tri­b­u­tion intent is a rel­a­tive­ly new concept.

Net­flix may have pio­neered binge-watch cul­ture, but it by no means per­fect­ed it, and as one show is put out to pas­ture, the made-to-stream pro­duc­tion line rum­bles on. Where broad­cast­ers go from this point on is anyone’s guess, but as shows fight for space in an increas­ing­ly sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket, the nov­el­ty of binge-watch­ing and the free­dom to stream at home just isn’t enough of a hook anymore.