This Friday sees the release of the fourth season of House Of Cards, as we pick up the story of President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his now ever-distancing wife Claire (Robin Wright).
As with the previous three seasons, all thirteen episodes of the season will be available at once, for viewers to watch at their own pleasure.
Looking back now, in the three short years since it was released, Netflix have since given us a huge amount of original programming, practically all of which was made instantly available to the viewer, with the only big exception being Better Call Saul, as the rights were tied up with American channell AMC who still owned the rights to Breaking Bad.
The viewing capability of the shows, which essentially followed the format of anyone who would binge on seasons when they came out on DVD box-sets, seems pretty par for the course now, but back in 2013, it was seen as something of a huge risk.
When it came to "event television", the likes of which we were used to getting from HBO or BBC, they would (and still do) release episodes week by week, taking up months of a viewers schedule.
When Netflix decided to release House Of Cards all at once, what was to stop a customer from signing up for one month, watching the show at their pleasure, and then cancelling the subscription?
Well, the answer to that was easy: have another must-watch show lined-up as an immediate follow up. House Of Cards premiered in February 2013. Hemlock Grove followed in April. The fourth season of Arrested Development arrived in May. Orange Is The New Black showed up in July. All the shows that everyone have been talking about in the years since kept popping up on the horizon, so the idea of leaving your Netflix subscription seemed ludicrous.
2015 alone brought Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Bloodline, Daredevil, Sense 8, Jessica Jones, Narcos, Master Of None and Making A Murderer.
But it all kicked off with House Of Cards, a remake of a four-episode mini-series that was originally aired in 1990. But with heavy hitters like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in front of the camera, as well as the likes of David Fincher (Gone Girl), James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross), Joel Schumacher (Falling Down) and Jodie Foster (The Beaver) on directing duties, the show had some major weight behind it.
The result was becoming the first ever net-only programme to be nominated for Emmys and to win Golden Globe awards, as well as creating a new culture of TV watching that devours entire weekends and feeds into an atmosphere of The Fear Of Overhearing Spoilers.
So come Monday, expect all your friends and family to have watched all of the Season 4 of the show, and if you haven't caught up, then prepare to spend the entire day trying to dodge the facts about who killed whom. You have been warned...
