House Of Cards Season 6 Review: 2 Ups & 6 Downs

3. The New Cast Members Are Mostly Wasted

The two major casting additions this year are the brilliant Diane Lane and Greg Kinnear, who play Annette and Bill Shepherd, ultra-rich siblings who run Shepherd Unlimited, a powerful conglomerate that's enormously influential in policy-making.

Sadly the Oscar nominees are given disappointingly under-written roles for the most part, being present throughout most of the season but rarely doing much of particular interest.

Lane at least gets to be quietly catty and share some fun scenes opposite Wright, but Kinnear's mostly confined to the periphery throughout. Neither of them get their fair due, and considering the life they could've breathed into this final batch of episodes, it's a shame they're wasted on such flat and forgettable characters.