House of Cards faces a singular challenge as it returns to Netflix for a fourth season: how to rival the thrills and twists of a real-life American Presidential race more absurd than anything Hollywood might conjure? In a world where Donald Trump is a plausible electoral force, what does Kevin Spacey's dastardly President Francis Underwood have to do to get our attention?

Whether by design or accident, David Fincher's darkly addictive reimagining of Andrew Davies’s Nineties series for the BBC seems to have contracted some of the delirium currently sweeping American politics. A feverish urgency has taken hold of a show that, when it began, wore a cool, calm countenance even as it gleefully depicted terrible people doing awful things to one another as they jostled for power and influence.

As the story resumed Commander-in-Chief Underwood was fighting for his political life, with principled insurgent Heather Dunbar (Elizabeth Marvel) threatening to wrest the Democratic Party presidential nomination from him.

Yet the biggest menace to his Presidency was posed by First Lady Claire (Robin Wright), missing and presumed to have gone rogue. Following the spectacular disintegration of their grand alliance last season, the two great anti-heroes of modern television were engaged in a dangerous dance of mutually assured destruction.