The Greatest TV Pilots Of All Time

House of Cards

The pilot episode of House of Cards was a make or break moment for Netflix. Though they’d dabbled in original content before, expectations were high for this Beau Willimon show. The David Fincher-directed pilot was a massive success, thanks in large part to Kevin Spacey’s brilliant performance as corrupt politician Frank Underwood.

The pilot of the Netflix series isn’t necessarily a pilot since it drops straight into the story without really introducing characters in a conventional way. Spacey told Think Progress that this is why he was on board with doing a show with Netflix: “What was great that they were they only network that said ‘You don’t have to do a pilot,’ Because David Fincher and I really didn’t want to do a pilot, because when you do a pilot, you’re kind of obligated to spend 45 minutes establishing all of the characters. And we didn’t want to do that. We just wanted to get on with telling a story, and tell a story over a long period of time.”