House of the Dragon: Season 1

The Old King, Jaehaerys Targaryen, dies with no clear line of succession. At a Great Council, the realm chooses Prince Viserys as his successor, despite the superior blood-claim of Princess Rhaenys, establishing a precedent that a man's claim to the Iron Throne will always outclass that of a woman. Many years later, Viserys' wife dies in childbirth and he names his daughter and only child, Rhaenyra as his own heir. But when Viserys marries again and sires several sons, the precedent that he benefited from sets Westeros on a course for a deadly clash.

HBO's Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, was the most successful, most talked-about television show of the 2010s. The disappointing finale aside, the show reset expectations for the scale of stories that could be told on the small screen and single-handedly turned adult, live-action fantasy into a viable television genre. Many fantasy shows have come along since seeking to pick up where it left off, such as The Witcher, The Wheel of Time and, most recently, Amazon's Rings of Power. But HBO itself has now rejoined the fray with a direct spin-off, a prequel set almost 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and charting the division of the Targaryen dynasty.

Perhaps frustratingly for all those other claimants to the fantasy crown, House of the Dragon emerges as the clear successor to Game of Thrones in overall quality. Despite the near-total absence of any of the same creative team from Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon arrives on screen with formidable verve and gravitas. It has the confidence to deal out its storytelling in measured doses, long scenes devoted to characterisation and relationships punctuated by swift bursts of action, dragonfire and violence. The show channels some of the same energy HBO's other great political drama, Succession, as a story of familial drama with vast-ranging consequences, a huge scope examined through a small lens. This gives Dragon some benefits even over its mothership series, with much less rapid transitioning between events separated by thousands of miles, allowing the show to delve deeper into the characters and their motivations.

Dragon still doesn't make things too easy for itself. The first season spans almost three decades, with several shifts in the cast. There's a lot of similar-looking characters with similar-sounding names, many coming complete with their own dragon (some of whom change owners as the story continues). If Game of Thrones had a sin of sometimes shying away from complexity and streamlining A Song of Ice and Fire's scope into something less ambitious, combining characters and (often pointlessly) renaming those with even vaguely similar names, House of the Dragon goes in the other direction, trusting the viewers will follow it along. This stands in especially harsh contrast to The Rings of Power, where at almost every turn the writers instead chose to simplify and streamline things, constantly underestimating the both the intelligence of the viewer and the richness of Tolkien's source material. 

Where Dragon overcomes potential hurdles is its constant reframing of the story on the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. Childhood friends and contemporaries (in a shift from the source material, where Alicent is older and more ambitious from the off), the two enjoy a strong camaraderie that is upset by politics, especially the yearning ambition of Alicent's father, Otto, Hand of the King. From the perspective of each, both Rhaenyra and Alicent have excellent reasons and sympathetic motivations for much of their actions. Rhaenyra is foolish in having children with something other than her husband, but she is also put in a difficult position by his inability to have children with her. Viserys often makes weak decisions to appease those around him, but he both has an aversion to bloodshed (not necessarily a bad thing) and a deep-seated belief that House Targaryen must marshal its strength against other, greater threats. Even the central argument over whether a woman should sit the Iron Throne delves into the idea of idealism versus pragmatism, what should be conflicting with what actually is.

The casting is exemplary. Paddy Considine plays King Viserys as a peacemaker and a family man who is never happier when sharing good news with his closest friends and family. Realpolitik and discussions of war anger him. Considine is already one of Britain's finest actors and House of the Dragon has finally given him the international awareness of that; his final scenes in the season should ensure him an Emmy nomination, at the very least, next year.

Similarly, Matt Smith shakes off the last vestiges of being Doctor Who to give a performance mixing anger, edgy violence and a yearning for acceptance as Prince Daemon, Viserys' younger, more reckless brother whom everyone fears will plunge the realm into war, but grows over the season into something of a more responsible figure. Smith had already made a great career pulling away from his early signature role and House of the Dragon solidifies his reputation.

Other seasoned hands get some great moments in the sun: Rhys Ifans is excellent as Otto Hightower, giving a human edge to his character's grasping ambition. Steve Toussaint brings a mixture of pride, dignity and passion as Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake. Eve Best is outrageously good as Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, whose historical anger at her own usurping brings an interesting perspective to the current crisis.

The focus of the season is definitely on the two central characters of Rhaenyra and Alicent. Milly Alcock and Emily Carey play the young Rhaenyra and Alicent (in the first five episodes) with a mixture of energy and responsibility. Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke play their adult incarnations (in the latter five episodes) with more nuance and cynicism, but channelling their younger counterparts' mannerisms and expressions in an impressive way.

Production-wise the show is also outstanding. Impressive sets and excellent costumes abound, and the CG is superb, especially anything involving the dragons. The show does make liberal use of video walls (similar to those used on The Mandalorian) and, like a lot of other modern fantasy shows, it sometimes feels a bit unnecessarily fake when real locations are substituted for CGI backdrops that can't help but feel sterile and unconvincing. Dragon goes a step further by faking some of the exact same places that were shot on location in Thrones (most notably the Dragonstone causeway), which makes the fakery even more obvious. However, Dragon does, for the most part, avoid the awful, plastic-looking CGI that blights a lot of modern genre productions, usually with much better use of lighting. Unfortunately Dragon does have a lot of murky night-time scenes and these are almost as badly-lit as the final season of Game of Thrones, with important scenes vanishing in a murky grey soup.

House of the Dragon is not flawless and does make some odd choices, and some outright (but certainly not fatal) stumbles. Several times the show unleashes "rule of cool" nonsense, things that look really spectacular but don't make any sense if you spend five seconds thinking about them: a Kingsguard brutally murdering a guy in front of a room full of witnesses and suffers no consequences; a dragon smashes through a building and kills dozens of civilians and nobody gives a toss; a character throws away a moment where they could end a conflict before it even starts with a minimum of bloodshed (although they later give some semi-reasonable justifications for it); Daemon runs through a storm of arrows and single-handedly fights off dozens of men in a highly improbable manner. In these moments the show teeters on the edge of Game of Thrones Season 7 and 8 silliness, but it always manages to pull itself back from the abyss with its character-focused and character-based dramatic scenes, which is where the meat of the story is.

Season 1 of House of the Dragon (****) is the finest slice of the Thrones franchise since at least the fourth season of the original series, and certainly the finest slice of live-action, epic fantasy TV to air since then as well (despite some other showings bringing much more money to the table). It's character-focused story mixes family and political drama to great effect, with outstanding vfx set pieces and uniformly excellent performances. Occasional jarring jumps in the timeline and events that visually impress but don't make sense logically threaten to undo the good work being done elsewhere, but ultimately the season is a great piece of television fantasy and drama.

The season is available to watch on HBO and HBO Max (and local equivalents) in much of the world, and Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK.

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Game of Thrones: Season 8.5

So, the second half of Game of Thrones' final season. Those were very definitely three episodes of television.

Game of Thrones is a series that, at its best, was impeccably acted, beautifully atmospheric and boasting tremendous production value and a soundtrack to die for. At its worst, it was over-melodramatic, confused in theme, badly-written, lacking in direction and relied too much on CG and spectacle to overcome its weaknesses. A perennial problem with Thrones is that it could be both of these things in the same episode. This has been going on since at least the first season, which managed to cram two of the best scenes in the series - Cersei and Ned Stark's confrontation in the garden of the Red Keep, and the thwarting of Ned Stark's attempted "coup" - with one of the very worst - Littlefinger explaining his character motivation and objectives to two random prostitutes for absolutely no reason - into the same hour.

But as the show continued, the ratio of strong material to weak tilted more firmly towards the latter. It would be simplistic to say that the show was great whilst it followed George R.R. Martin's novels closely (as it did for the first four seasons) and awful when it moved away (in the latter four seasons), rather that the show suffered when it not longer had a clear direction. The producers' hesitancy in whether or not they were going to adapt storylines from the fourth and fifth novels in the series is a clear example of this, resulting in the dire mangling of both the Dorne and Iron Island storylines because of a failure to commit to them early on, as they instead half-heartedly nodded at them in Seasons 5 and 6 and then rapidly retreated from them, to the confusion of fans and actors alike. The show needed a firm plan for the final four seasons to map out character and story arcs, and its failure to do this (or to stick to any such plan if it existed) irrevocably weakened the lead-up to the finale.

The final two seasons of Game of Thrones have suffered from a related problem: rushing. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss chose to end Game of Thrones in just thirteen episodes in the final two seasons rather than the standard twenty. This part of the story is one that George R.R. Martin envisages taking (at least) two thousand-page novels totalling just under a million words; for comparison the first four seasons of the show covered about 2,300 pages totalling just over a million words. Even taking into account that the show has pulled out hundreds of characters and dozens of storylines, it was clear that this was going to be rushed. I just don't think anyone was expecting it to be this rushed. Some episodes in earlier seasons could be criticised for a slow pace and lack of story development as characters sat around talking to one another; but often those same episodes were praised for their dialogue, acting and for firmly establishing relationships and setting up important worldbuilding and story elements for later on. Game of Thrones was never as subtle in its storytelling and characterisation as HBO forebears such as The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire, but at its best it wasn't far off.

These final three episodes show the consequence of rushing your story and prioritising the plot resolution over characterisation. In this sense Game of Thrones makes the reverse mistake to Lost (another show with a problematic final season), which chose to focus on characters over plot and provided (mostly) satisfying character finales whilst providing only perfunctory story resolutions: after six seasons of setting up intricate mysteries, the show ended with...a fistfight on a clifftop and then the characters chilling out decades later in the afterlife? Game of Thrones goes in the opposite direction and provides all the big battles, last-minute betrayals and bittersweet moral dilemmas fans might have been hoping for, but to get there it has characters being either much stupider or much smarter than they usually are or going through torturous character development that really needs about two full seasons to unfold convincingly in about three scenes (or in Daenerys' case, mostly offscreen in the gap between the fourth and fifth episodes, which was a...bold choice).

Going into specifics, The Last of the Starks may not be the worst episode of the entire series, but it is cheerfully the dumbest, featuring a fleet of medieval-era ships equipped with advanced ground-to-air missile capabilities (including the ability to fire through or around solid matter) and cloaking devices. What should be a shocking and upsetting moment instead turns into a moment of outright, laugh-out-loud comedy, undoing the good work early on of a fun post-battle celebration scene.

The Bells, by contrast, may be the most visually impressive hour of television ever filmed. Both the CGI and the practical effects are overwhelmingly impressive, Ramin Djawadi's score elevates everything to the next level and Miguel Sapochnik's ground-level camera work as a city dies is frequently breathtaking. There are problems with logic (the high-tech AA wooden missile system from the previous episode is now apparently non-functional because reasons) and character, but the brute force of visual spectacle and atmosphere almost overwhelms it. This is television created through brute force shock and awe, with all subtlety and nuance pounded into rubble. It's undeniably impressive and, with better character work and build-up, it could have been one of the show's finest hours. Instead it has to settle for being an undeniably visceral experience that completely rewrites audience expectations for the level of production value television is capable of achieving.

The Iron Throne ends the series and has to satisfy eight years of audience expectations. How much it succeeds will vary tremendously by each viewer, but I found it to be a mixed bag. Some characters have note-perfect endings, others have reasonable endings but without a lot of good setup for them and others just end in an extremely random (verging on non sequitur, in the case of Bronn) place. It isn't the unmitigated disaster it's been described as in some places, but neither is it satisfying overall, nor hitting the bittersweet tone it's clearly aiming for. If anything, the ending for quite a few of the characters feels a bit too neat and happy, which is not something Game of Thrones should ever be accused of.

In the final analysis, these last three episodes again represent Game of Thrones at its very best and its very worst. Fantastic casting, acting, production value, effects, music and costumes let down by sloppy planning and extremely variable writing. But for better and worse, it is done and it has completely rewritten the rules of television as we know. The coming decade of television will be written and produced in Game of Thrones' shadow, and it will be interesting in an increasingly fragmented landscape if another show can come along and ever have the same kind of impact.


804: The Last of the Starks (*½)
805: The Bells (***½)
806: The Iron Throne (**½)

Game of Thrones: Season 8.0

Great armies are gathering at Winterfell. The White Walkers have breached the Wall and are marching south, planning to wipe out humanity. The scene is set for a great confrontation, a war which will determine whether anyone lives to see another dawn.

Originally I'd planned to wait until the season was complete before reviewing the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, as with the past few seasons, but structurally the final season is panning out in a way that seemed more rewarding to review it as two halves. So here we go.

Way back in 2007, when it was confirmed that HBO was developing George R.R. Martin's fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire for television, they also almost immediately confirmed that the show would be called Game of Thrones. It made sense: Game of Thrones is a more concise, faster-to-say title that fits onto merchandise better and is more memorable. Many of the spin-off media from the books had used that title for years for much the same reason. Watching Season 8, it strikes me that the title change may also reflect a much more fundamental and philosophical shift in the focus of the story.

A Song of Ice and Fire is a title rooted in mysticism, prophecy and thematic conflict, the struggle between the ice of the Others (the books' analogue of the White Walkers) and the fire of the living, as championed by the dragons of House Targaryen. It suggests that the core struggles of the series will culminate in a confrontation between humanity and the Others, as personified by the Prince That Was Promised, the singer of the Song of Ice and Fire, who in the books may be Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen (or both). Game of Thrones, on the other hand, emphasises the Machiavellian realpolitik of the story, the ground-level struggle between differing political factions for a more mundane goal, control of the Iron Throne of Westeros.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones suggests that the producers had another reason beyond conciseness for changing the name. Season 8 breaks the remaining part of the story into two and addresses them separately, focusing in the first three episodes (surprisingly) on the struggle against the White Walkers at Winterfell and the latter three on who gets to claim the Iron Throne in King's Landing. This suggests that, in the view of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the final conflict is a mundane, human one, focusing again on the conflict between Stark and Lannister, which is where we came in during Season 1. It's not an invalid take, given the lack of the source material, but it feels like it's at variance with the thematic conflicts and ideas established in the books, where very much it is presented that the mundane political conflict is a dangerous distraction from the true threat gathering to the north (despite the Others' relative lack of screentime - or pagetime - in the books versus the TV show).

As such the first three episodes of Season 8 form more of a three-and-a-half hour movie. The first episode, written by Dave Hill (soon to be tackling a new fantasy TV show as a writer on Amazon's Wheel of Time series) sees the gathering of forces at Winterfell and both long-awaited reunions (particularly Jon with Arya, whom he hasn't seen since the second episode of the entire series). It's a fairly standard "catching everyone up" opening episode for a season, with some nice callbacks to the first episode of the entire series.

The second episode is set immediately before the arrival of the White Walkers and is penned by Bryan Cogman, the writer responsible for many of the show's finest episodes and moments. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a love letter to the characters, delving deeply into character moments and conversations between them on the eve of an apocalyptic final confrontation. It's also a huge nod to book-reading fans, referencing the legend of Ser Duncan the Tall (the star of Martin's spin-off series of novellas about a hedge knight wandering Westeros ninety years before the events of the main story) and his likely status as an ancestor of Brienne.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is in fact probably the best episode of the entire series since at least Season 4. It sets up character conflict down the line (such as Jon's claim to the Iron Throne, which clashes with Daenerys') but also explores interrelationships between characters. It's also quite funny, warm and human, which is something that Game of Thrones can sometimes neglect in favour of cynical backstabbing and death.

The slow build-up ("the deep breath before the plunge" as another fantasy figure said) explodes in The Long Night, an 80-minute episode revolving almost entirely around the battle for Winterfell and for the dawn. Humanity is on the line and the enemy has an overwhelmingly impressive force, but our heroes have some aces up their sleeve as well.

Unfortunately, what is supposed to be Game of Thrones' most climactic and thrilling battle is let down on a number of fronts. The first is that the episode feels like it hasn't been colour-corrected properly. It's hard to make out what's going on, even on a properly-calibrated television. Game of Thrones has done night battles before - at the Blackwater in Season 2 and at the Wall in Season 4 - and it's always done a great job of keeping things clear and visible even in bad light. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy did the same thing at Helm's Deep. But in this case the action is often muddled and hard to parse. Things are better when the action switches inside - Arya stalking a bunch of wights in Winterfell's library may one of the show's best moments in terms of tension and stealth - but most of the exterior scenes are blighted by poor visibility.

It also doesn't help that it's very much a "TV battle" with very little thought made to genuine medieval battle tactics, hence the bemusing scenes of a light cavalry force (complete with specialised horse archers, who aren't used at all) being sent to directly attack a much larger and stronger infantry formation head-on, followed by powerful siege weapons being mounted outside defensive fortifications and in front of an infantry formation (instead of behind it). The siege weapons fire off two or three salvos and are then immediately disregarded and destroyed. Game of Thrones has done very well in portraying tactics before (particularly in Blackwater and Watchers on the Wall, still the shows' highwater marks in terms of battle episodes), but it's also done incredibly poorly, such as in Battle of the Bastards, and this episode is definitely on the latter side of the scale.

At 80 minutes, with a battle lasting almost twice the length of Helm's Deep, the episode outstays its welcome, with the scenes of people killing wights getting boring much earlier than that. Continuity is a problem as well, as on multiple occasions we see groups of characters being completely surrounded by insane odds, but after a camera cut we see the group is now standing in more open ground fighting off a few wights, who are politely lining up before attacking. The "unstoppable horde" of the wights feels somewhat contrived as a result.

The battle ends in exactly the manner you expect (even if the people delivering the killer blows to crucial enemies are not who you expect) with a far lower casualty count than you'd expect from such a hard-fought engagement. We don't need to see a bloodbath with 75% of the cast wiped out or anything, but it does feel like our heroes got off easily and won a stunning victory at relatively little cost (at least in terms of characters the audience is invested in, the actual body count seems immense).

Still, this opening trilogy does leave some interesting questions for the latter half of the season. The battle for the Iron Throne should be incredibly one-sided, as Team Daenerys/Jon have two dragons and Cersei's side have none, which raises the question of what curveballs can be thrown by the writers to make this final struggle more interesting. We will find out soon enough.


801: Winterfell (***½)
802: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (*****)
803: The Long Night (**½)

Game of Thrones: Season 7

The Seven Kingdoms stand on a knife's edge. In Winterfell House Stark has dramatically regained power, Jon Snow being proclaimed King in the North and Sansa Stark as Lady of Winterfell. In King's Landing Cersei Lannister has usurped the Iron Throne herself by destroying all of her enemies in one fell swoop. But a new player as arrived in Westeros: Daenerys Targaryen has landed on Dragonstone with a vast fleet and army at her command. As the three factions size one another up, Bran Stark arrives in Winterfell with a dire warning of the threat beyond the Wall, a threat that is now more powerful and capable than ever before...and one that is marching south.

The end draws near. In eighteen months or so Game of Thrones will end forever, concluding the most popular and defining television series of this decade. It's a show that has completely rewritten the rules for the depiction of fantasy on the small screen and also raised the bar in terms of visual effects, epic storytelling and sheer scale. To get from the end of Season 6 to the end of the overall story, producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss made a curious decision: to give themselves only thirteen episodes to deliver an ending to that narrative, a story that author George R.R. Martin figures will take at least two more thousand-page novels. The result is a truncated seventh season of seven episodes and a six-episode final season to air in late 2018 or early 2019.

The cynical may suggest that Benioff and Weiss, having exhausted (or ignored) the material in the five published Song of Ice and Fire novels, now simply want to cut to the chase and end the story as quickly as possible so they can move onto other projects. They've had a movie development deal with Fox on standby for years, and have also announced their intention to make a new show with HBO about a parallel universe where the South won - or at least survived - the American Civil War. They've been very vocal in how all-consuming Game of Thrones has been in their lives and how much they're looking forwards to going back to the States, having spent almost a decade based in Northern Ireland working on this show.

It's not necessarily an invalid take. Game of Thrones has always been at its best when it's taken Martin's long novels, identified a key, widely-resonant storyline and then stripped it of tertiary characters and extraneous detail to deliver the same emotional shock to a wider audience in less time, arguably best-executed in the Red Wedding in Season 3. But at its worst, the show has taken a key storyline, tried to the same thing and badly fumbled it, to the point where they should have simply never gone there in the first place (say hello to Dorne in Seasons 5 and 6).

Harsh, but not inaccurate.

Season 7 therefore is the fastest-moving season to date. In terms of raw plot and story development, the seventh season has more going on in its seven episodes than any two previous ten-episode seasons combined. It's a busy, fast-moving season where fleets of ships can half-circumnavigate Westeros (a journey of thousands of miles) in minutes and characters can go from sitting on a rock beyond the Wall surrounded by zombies to having a meeting in King's Landing in a few scenes. This gives the season a sense of relentless purpose: this is Game of Thrones at its fastest-moving and most dynamic, and for a show that has occasionally allowed itself to drown in filler (remember when Theon was tortured for a whole season?), it can be undeniably satisfying.

But it also comes at a cost: it can make the season feel like an edited highlights reel of the Seven Kingdom's Greatest Hits. The devil is in the details and if (by necessity) Game of Thrones has sometimes fumbled the details compared to the novels, it's (mostly) been self-consistent with itself. This season that goes out of the window: continuity (even with just what was established in previous seasons) is now optional and the show's worldbuilding takes a series of tremendous knocks to credibility in the process. Cersei brutally murdering the High Septon and a large chunk of the nobility of the Seven Kingdoms by blowing up the High Sept should be a major event with huge ramifications: there should be riots in the streets, many of her own Lannister and Baratheon vassals should have rebelled and she should have been proclaimed a heretic and a usurper. Instead, she gets away with it because reasons. The Lannister army - inexplicably now the largest in Westeros - then defeats the Tyrell army, despite the latter being established (back in Season 2) as twice the size, because the Tyrells apparently suck at war. Dothraki armies in the tens of thousands can teleport from an island to a hundred miles or more inland with no-one noticing. The enormous Greyjoy fleet is able to sneak in out of Blackwater Bay - despite it being blockaded by Daenerys's forces by sea and air - at will. People in Westeros can fall into massive lakes weighed down in full armour but be rescued with trivial ease. A man is able to run dozens of miles, send a raven to Dragonstone (well over a thousand miles to the south) and have three dragons show up in the space of a couple of nights (at best). Undead armies carry industrial-strength iron chains around with them just on the off-chance they might have to drag dead dragons out from under the ice.

One or two such issues - and the show has had plenty of minor worldbuilding problems in the past - could be ignored or overcome through fanwanking, but at a certain point the show's mounting issues with internal consistency and logic threaten to overwhelm the viewer's sense of disbelief. For Season 7 of Game of Thrones to work, the viewer has to accept that a lot of it simply does not make sense.

If you can accept that (and the mileage on this varies immensely by viewer), there is much to enjoy in this penultimate season. Game of Thrones has always been a good-looking show and this season it looks absolutely stunning. This season has, simply put, the best visual effects of any TV show to date. The dragons (who are front-and-centre in dozens of scenes, including several massive battles) are jaw-dropping, the battle scenes are incredible and the sense of scale that comes from the newfound ability to use drones and CGI to get helicopter-like establishing shots is exceptional. Game of Thrones is starting to exceed the quality of the Lord of the Rings movies for visual splendour, which on a TV budget (albeit the biggest TV budget in history, now exceeding $14.2 million per episode) is no mean feat. The use of CG is also, for the most part, well-judged. The epic battle at the end of the fourth episode raises important questions about the use of weapons of mass destruction against human beings, and the one at the end of the sixth episode ends on a near-heartbreaking note (slightly undone by the aforementioned industrial chain scene a few minutes later, but still). For visual spectacle Game of Thrones absolutely cannot be beaten.

For character work, the show has always boasted the best cast on television and the paring down of that cast over the years means more characters get more screentime. The front-runners, like Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington, are all as reliable as ever, but it's both somewhat surprising and pleasing to see perennial second-stringers like Davos (Liam Cunningham), Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) and Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) rise to the fore with lots of excellent scenes. The fifth episode, which basically consists of Davos Seaworth arranging meetings, smuggling people in and out of cities and assembling the Westerosi equivalent of the Dirty Dozen, may be the strongest for this reason. Amidst all the fire and fury, the writers also further the storylines of characters like Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) with satisfying emotional resolutions to their arcs. When Game of Thrones hits its A-game, with the epic scale, fantastic actors, engrossing storylines and visual effects working in tandem, the show is simply unbeatable.

Unfortunately the seventh season is unable to deliver that mix with consistency. Scenes where Lena Headey delivers powerful moments of soul-baring character honesty are mixed in with hammy villain dialogue. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau remains one of the show's strongest performers, but the producers have really not given Jaime Lannister a consistent character direction for three seasons now, and if he finally gets some good scenes at the end of the season it's a bit of a case of too little, too late. Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington have to sell their characters falling for one another, but they don't have enough time or (frankly) enough chemistry to make it work in the time allowed. I was far more invested in the will-they/won't-they romance of Missandei and Grey Worm, or even Brienne and Tormund, than I was in this apparently key character development. And, once again, Aiden Gillen's guttural performance as Littlefinger remains the most inexplicably bizarre and strange on the show.

I've sounded rather down on the season, which is a shame because at its best, the seventh season is visceral, thrilling and laden with punch-the-air, "Hell yeah!" moments, some that book-readers have been waiting for for twenty-one years. But all too often those moments are undercut by the story decisions being made to get there really not gelling together very well.

Game of Thrones's seventh season can therefore be summed up as visually stunning, beautifully acted and absolutely dumber than a box of frogs. But if you can embrace that, it's still one of the most watchable shows on television.

701: Dragonstone (***½)
702: Stormborn (***½)
703: The Queen's Justice (***)
704: The Spoils of War (****)
705: Eastwatch (****½)
706: Beyond the Wall (****)
707: The Dragon and the Wolf (****)

Game of Thrones: Season 6

Westeros remains engulfed by banditry and political turmoil. In King's Landing the Faith of the Seven has gained tremendous power and inflicted moral shame even on Cersei Lannister, the Queen Regent. A new age of religious dominance seems nigh in Westeros. Far across the sea, Daenerys Targaryen has disappeared from the city of Meereen, leaving Tyrion Lannister in reluctant control of the situation. For Daenerys, she once again finds herself a guest of the Dothraki and having to navigate their customs for her own advantage. But in Westeros itself the true threat comes from beyond the Wall, as the Night's King and his White Walkers march...and the only person willing to stand against them has been betrayed and murdered by his own followers.

 

Missing: Brad Pitt in a battle skirt.

The fifth season of Game of Thrones was its worst, saved from mediocrity by the penultimate episode Hardhome which completely raised the bar for the show in terms of dramatic power, visual effects and small-screen myth-making. For a show which, for four previous seasons, had always been an effective and satisfying slice of drama (if still running a distant second to the novels in terms of characterisation and satisfying political drama), the fifth was a major let-down, reportedly the result of the producers not knowing how many episodes they had left to tell the story and the confusion caused by adapting elements from George R.R. Martin's novels whilst also outpacing them.

The sixth season is, thankfully, vastly superior to the fifth. It is has a sense of purpose and relentlessness which has been missing for a while, as well as a willingness to seed major moments amongst almost all of the episodes rather than holding back the best for last. This isn't to say that it's all plain sailing. Arya spends too long getting beaten up on the streets of Braavos before finally doing something about it. Bran's crucial, fan theory-confirming visions are doled out excruciatingly slowly (and in a contrived manner) over the course of the whole season. Sam and Gilly have so little to do that it may have been better to have pulled a Bran and rested them for a year. For the second season in a row we're set up a very promising Brienne storyline that then goes nowhere fast. And, as thrilling as seeing Daenerys humble the Dothraki is, it's also a redundant repeat of what she already did five years ago.

The biggest and most continuous problem through the season, and one I suspect we will see going forwards, is the absence of George R.R. Martin's dialogue. Benioff and Weiss are - when on their game - effective plotters and sometimes quite clever in how they reframe the source material to work in 60-minute chunks with far fewer characters and locations to call upon, but their original dialogue is frequently clunky. With no novels left to adapt, the opportunity to use Martin's dialogue in-situ is largely gone and they have to fall back on their own material, which is much more variable. There's also major issues with portraying the passage of time (most notably Gilly's still-too-young baby, who should be a three or four-year-old by now) and characters teleporting around the map with no thought for plausibility.

But elsewhere the show does better. Extending pain and misery across eight seasons without surcease would have been rather depressing, so after the mostly dark and defeat-shrouded fifth season the sixth gives us a huge number of victories. Major storylines are closed down, most of the major villains are defeated and the "good guys" (or, in some cases, maybe "least-worst bad guys") are on the rise. Particularly interesting, especially after the claims of misogyny laid against the show in prior season, is how the sixth year sees women rising to power right across the board: Cersei, Daenerys, Yara Greyjoy, the Sand Snakes of Dorne, Sansa, Arya, Lady Mormont (this year's break-out character bar none) and more.

Lyanna Mormont, indisputably the breakout character of Season 6. At this point I think she's more popular than the Red Viper.

The question of whether the sixth season would spoil the final two books has also been answered by the TV show going off in a completely different direction in numerous storylines. The only areas where the show does spoil the books is by confirming fairly blatantly obvious theories (about both Jon's birth and his fate) that even GRRM doesn't strenuously deny any more. Those things that are spoiled seem to be fairly minor - such as the origin of Hodor's name - but I suspect the true spoilers will come in the next two seasons.

Although the sixth season paces major plot movements and developments over its whole length, it does spin some wheels in the latter part of the season and the season premiere is probably the weakest they've ever delivered. But other episodes are extremely strong, such as Oathbreaker, The Door and, especially, the finale.

Perhaps the most disappointing episode of the season is the penultimate one. We were promised a jaw-dropping, amazing field battle sequence and didn't entirely get what was promised. The battlefield tactics were a horrendous mess that didn't make sense, Jon Snow's military acumen is non-existent (the handy strategist who held the Wall against Mance Rayder has gone AWOL) and Sansa witholds vitally important tactical information on reinforcements for absolutely no discernible reason. Yes, seeing the end of Ramsay Bolton is highly satisfying, but the way it was reached was contrived to the point of incoherence.

Vastly superior is the season finale, easily the best they have ever done and a strong contender for best episode of the entire series. Some plot developments were predictable, but seeing Cersei sweep the board clean of her enemies in one swift movement and be established as the show's final human villain of consequence (Euron, I suspect, will remain a side-player) is immensely satisfying, especially as it is set to Ramin Djawadi's finest musical work since the first season. Bringing in new bad guys can be fun, but returning to the very first one and seeing them gain an immense amount of new power and prestige is even more satisfying. It was a delicious moment, if undermined by the fact that Cersei's enemies outnumber and outflank her on such a scale that her defeat is inevitable. But that's for next season to worry about.

Not many TV shows can boast a scene that some people have been literally waiting to see for twenty years.

More impressive is the shot of Daenerys setting sail for Westeros. As someone who picked up A Storm of Swords on release day in 2000 hoping that's how that novel would end, it's brilliant to finally see that realised on screen. The staging of the shot also made me wonder if the CG guys were tipping the hat at David Benioff, as a similar shot of the Greek fleet can be found early in the running of his 2004 movie Troy.

But of course the killer moment of the finale was the revelation that one of the longest-held fan theories about the books, one that was discussed on nascent internet message boards as early as 1996, was true. By now it was all but certain it was true, but the final confirmation still delivers a powerful emotional kick. Special kudos to Robert Aramayo who played the young Eddard Stark so convincingly in flashbacks. Although a "Robet's Rebellion" prequel series has been ruled out by George R.R. Martin (who has the rights to it and is not minded to sell them), if HBO ever do talk him around it'd be great to perhaps see Aramayo in the role again.

Overall, the sixth season of Game of Thrones executes some much-needed damage control after the problems of the fifth season to deliver a much more interesting set of stories. There are still weaknesses in worldbuilding, dialogue, characterisation and how it handles military matters, but the show has developed a renewed sense of purpose and focus as the final end of the show comes into view.

601: The Red Woman (***)
602: Home (***½)
603: Oathbreaker (****½)
604: Book of the Stranger (****½)
605: The Door (****½)
606: Blood of My Blood (***½)
607: The Broken Man (****)
608: No One (***½)
609: Battle of the Bastards (***½)
610: The Winds of Winter (*****)

Game of Thrones: Season 5

Westeros is trying to recover from the devastation of the War of the Five Kings. Bandits and raiders are rife in the countryside and the Greyjoys and Stannis Baratheon remain in arms against King Tommen. In King's Landing, the machinations of the Queen Regent threaten to shatter the alliance between Houses Lannister and Tyrell, whilst Jon Snow's determination to forge an alliance with the wildlings proves controversial with his brothers in the Night's Watch. Far across the sea, Daenerys's attempts to restore peace to the ancient city of Meereen are threatened by a band of rebels enraged by her decision to ban slavery and by the fact that she has lost control of her dragons.

Much will be written about the fifth season of Game of Thrones in the months and years to come. This was always going to be the season in which George R.R. Martin's novels and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss's TV show were going to dramatically diverge from one another, the near-inevitable result of both the needs of dramatisation (which would likely not bear the introspection and subtlety of the fourth and fifth books in the series) and the fact that the TV show is now outpacing the books, requiring both outright invention on the part of the producers as well as drawing on elements from books as-yet unreleased, or even unwritten.

This process has mixed results. In some cases, the adaptation continues to hit its sweet spot of getting complex stories from the novels across on screen in a simpler form, but one that is also clearer, more concise and retaining the thematic essentials whilst paring away unnecessary (if still interesting) supporting material and characters. King's Landing particularly benefits from this, with lots of minor politics involving new or vanishingly minor characters swept aside in favour of a more ruthless focus on Cersei's growing hatred of the Tyrells and the arrival of the High Sparrow, played with flawless passion by Jonathan Pryce. This culminates in the excellent, distressing "Walk of Shame" sequence, in which Lena Headey knocks it out of the park as Cersei is humiliated to the point where even the most hardened viewer may feel sorry for her, despite her many crimes.

Almost as well-handled (until its conclusion) is the story at the Wall. Lots of minor crises within the Night's Watch are jettisoned in favour of Jon Snow being given a more decisive story arc: becoming Lord Commander, leading a fleet to rescue the wildlings, getting in over his head at the Battle of Hardhome and then being forced to flee but at least having secured a new alliance.

Then we have the infamous Dornish storyline. This is botched, and botched quite badly. It's a waste of both superlative casting (Alexander Siddig is fantastic, but doesn't have much to do) and beautiful scenery (the result of Spain being added to the shooting locations), with the show delivering the feeblest fight sequence in its history, some of the most risible dialogue and, in the relationship between Tyene Sand and Bronn, who is old enough to be her grandfather, some of its most cringe-inducing flirting (despite the heroic efforts of both actors). There are moments where you can see why the producers thought it was a good idea, such as the "reasonable" negotiations between Jaime and Doran and the final scene with Jaime and Myrcella, but it could be argued that the producers should have followed their first instincts and simply not gone to Dorne at all. The fact that the story is also missing its key scene from the books (the one that made the whole story in the books make sense) also hurts it badly.

Then we have Meereen and the Winterfell/Stannis situation, which can both be described as "problematic". The Meereen story is simplified from the books, which might be a good thing, with less interchangeable characters, less factions and less politics involving minor tertiary characters. However, the TV series fails to replace these elements with anything more interesting. Instead we have repeated (and redundant) scenes of the Sons of the Harpy slaughtering curiously ineffectual Unsullied by the dozen and repeated (and redundant) scenes of Daenerys musing on opening the fighting pits or not. There are some golden moments here, such as Tyrion and Daenerys finally meeting and the final, epic showdown in the Great Pit, but otherwise it's a story left spinning its wheels for too long.

The Winterfell story is even more variable. Combining the wildly disparate and disjointed Brienne, Sansa, Theon and Ramsay arcs from the novels into one storyline that fuses them together is a bold move and one that actually makes sense and almost works. It is sabotaged by again benching characters for long periods (Brienne's Season 5 storyline can be summed up as "The Woman Who Stared At Masonry"), running roughshod over motivations (Littlefinger seems uncharacteristically uninformed and stupid) and introducing controversy for controversy's sake (the ending to the sixth episode). Excellent acting by all involved does elevate the story and some scenes are genuinely brilliant. Roose Bolton's matter-of-fact recounting of Ramsay's conception seems to disturb even the unflappably demented Ramsay, whilst Alfie Allen sells Theon's internal struggle to become his old self again with tragic intensity. Sophie Turner also rises above some questionable story twists to deliver some of her finest moments in the role of Sansa to date.

However, it is Stannis's storyline that walks off with the prize for the most howl-inducingly frustrating. Since his introduction in Season 2, the show's depiction of the character has suffered in comparison to the novels, where he is one of Martin's most subtle and complex characters. His motivations are simple on the surface but more complex underneath and he is a character that is determined more by bad PR than reality (the common observation that Stannis humourless is undercut by occasional, very dry almost-quips). Fleetingly, the TV show has shown the same character such as during his determination at the Blackwater and in his first meeting with Jon Snow. But it's not until Season 5 that it seems to nail his character: correcting the grammar of the Night's Watch, nodding approvingly over Jon Snow's leadership tactics and being more fatherly with his daughter. Of course, it was a trap, all done to make his preposterous and utterly unconvincing about-heel turn towards the end of the ninth episode all the more painful to watch. Stephen Dillane was superb in the role, but it does feel like the TV show's producers and writers fundamentally misunderstood the character throughout the series.

Almost as disappointing is the end to Jon Snow's storyline. In A Dance with Dragons, Jon gradually sends away his most experienced men to man the other castles on the Wall, inadvertently removing the Night's Watch officers who were at the Fist of the First Men and fought the White Walkers there. This leaves behind a cabal of men who haven't seen the true threat from the north and whom it feels convincing would turn on and betray their commander. In the TV series this does not happen, and Castle Black is stuffed full of rangers who have just seen thousands of corpses rise from the dead and the White Walkers themselves in the full terrible majesty of their power. The notion that the Watch would betray Jon under such circumstances is laughable, not helped by the climactic Caesar moment being staged in a manner more befitting Monty Python (with the assassins neatly lined up in a row to each stab Jon and utter their catchphrase, and he politely doesn't keel over until they're all done). Poor stuff.

There are other moments in the fifth season of Game of Thrones when it feels like the show is dealing with pure myth: the voyage through the ruins of Valyria is a genuinely awe-inspiring moment of magic and the Battle of Hardhome is the best action sequence conceived for the series so far, a full-on zombie rumble that would do Sam Raimi proud and which blows every single zombie action sequence in five seasons of The Walking Dead completely out of the water. The depiction of Braavos is pretty good, and the scenes in the House of Black and White are creepy. The scenes with the dragons are amazing, the more frequent use of CGI establishing shots gives the show a sense of scale that favourably compares with the best films and the production values remain jaw-dropping. The show still has the best cast on television. It remains, even in its weakest moments, watchable.

But there's also the feeling that the fifth season is a little too disjointed, more willing to lean on lazy coincidence and cliche than previous seasons. There's also a distressing lack of attention to detail, with Dorne's location on the title sequence map not being quite right, Jon Snow's fleet apparently landing on the wrong side of the Wall and the plausible military side of things being completely thrown out the window (if Stannis was really a master tactician, he would never do the things he does in the finale).

The fifth season of Game of Thrones is the weakest to date, delivering some of the worst moments and episodes, but it still manages to shine with some real moments of dramatic power. It certainly leaves things in an interesting place going forwards, even if it feels implausible that this huge story (even the TV show's truncated version) can be wrapped up in just twenty more episodes. But we will see how the sixth and penultimate season handles things next year.



501: The Wars to Come (***½)
502: The House of Black and White (***½)
503: High Sparrow (***½)
504: Sons of the Harpy (****)
505: Kill the Boy (****½)
506: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken (**½)
507: The Gift (****)
508: Hardhome (*****)
509: The Dance of Dragons (****)
510: Mother's Mercy (***½)

Forthcoming: Season 6 (March/April 2016)

Game of Thrones: Season 4

In the Seven Kingdoms, the War of the Five Kings is all but over. King Joffrey is poised to marry Lady Margaery Tyrell, placing the bulk of the military power of the continent under his command. Stannis Baratheon persists in his claim to the throne, but his lack of men, ship and gold forces his Hand, Ser Davos Seaworth, to seek allies in unusual places. Meanwhile, the forces of Mance Rayder advance on the critically undermanned Wall, whilst far to the east Daenerys Targaryen seizes the slaver city of Meereen, only to find that holding it will be more difficult than she thought.

The wildlings brought a keg to the party so big it needed a mammoth to drag it in.

The fourth season of Game of Thrones is the most ambitious to date. In terms of structure and plot it draws upon no less than three of George R.R. Martin's novels (A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons), features a battle sequence that dwarfs even the Blackwater from Season 2 and features much more extensive use of CGI for creature effects, establishing shots and even virtual sets.

In overall terms, it may be the strongest season to date. Previous seasons built slowly to massive 'Episode Nine' moments with an extended coda afterwards, but Season 4 features some massive moments and confrontations throughout its run. The Battle for the Wall in episode nine is indeed amazing and may be the best episode of the season, but there are other moments through the season which come close to rivalling it (the "Purple Wedding", Tyrion's trial and resulting duel and multiple moments in the finale). It's certainly a more compelling season than the preceding two, with more substantial moments of plot and character development in early episodes rather than just a lot of slow-building set-up.

Performances are, as usual, superb. The newcomer of note this season is Pedro Pascal as Prince Oberyn Martell, who brings all the deadly grace, measured debauchery, confident swagger and resolute vengeance of the book character to the screen. Other newcomers are less impressive, although this is more down to the writing than performances: the decision to reduce Mace Tyrell to a bumbling oaf only worth comic relief as Tywin ignores him is implausible given how badly reliant Tywin is on Mace's army and support. Peter Dinklage, Charles Dance, Conleth Hill and Rory McCann continue to provide superlative performances, and as usual Aidan Gillen's acting is undermined by his ludicrous Batman voice. Sophie Turner steps things up in the last few episodes as Sansa gains some agency and power of her own, but, disappointingly, it feels like Maisie Williams is treading water a little as Arya. She has a few good moments (such as her outrage as the Hound mistreats a family who has taken them in) but she often makes inertness Arya's response to threatening situations.

The stand-out performance of the season, in my book, must go to Gwendoline Christie as Brienne. A little stiff and awkward in the second season (where it fitted the character superbly) and more confident in the third, Christie really comes into her own this year with a series of humourous exchanges with Pod, some human ones with Jaime and a brutal confrontation with the Hound in the finale. These all serve to complicate her character and the actress more than meets the challenge. In a much more limited role, it's also good to see Kristofer Hivju nailing Tormund more as the character from the books (part man, part force of nature), particularly in his final discussions with Jon Snow (Kit Harington being effectively surly and northern, as usual).

"That's the second-biggest statue representing the liberty of former slaves from tyranny and oppression I've ever seen!"

So the series is well-paced, with some great storytelling moments and some wise decisions on when to follow the books religiously and when to move away and do their own thing. There are a few missteps when it comes to translating iconic scenes from the books, with them generally being made less powerful and resonant than what was in print. This may be down to a limitation of the medium (Tyrion thinks about Tysha fairly regularly in the books, whilst in the TV show it's unlikely viewers will remember a minor backstory point made three years earlier) but it also feels like sometimes there are changes for change's sake, which hurts the TV show by reducing the full potential impact of scenes.

Another problem in Season 4 is that the ugly spectre of sexual violence rears its head more noticeably than ever before. In the novels, there are certainly unpleasant moments of sexual assault or threatened violence against both men and women, but the TV show takes this to new extremes in the fourth season with an inexplicable (from plot and character terms) sexual assault in the third episode and the disturbing use of 'rape-as-wallpaper' in the fourth. Whilst this is a harsh and ugly world and the urge not to sugar-coat it must be strong, the writers go way overboard in these incidents and seem to be using the very real and distressingly common crimes of sexual violence for the purposes of drumming up controversy and media coverage. The presentation of one of the villains responsible for these scenes, Karl, as a corny villain who drinks blood from the skulls of his enemies (a character and scene not in the books) doesn't really help with the idea that these scenes are meant to be realistic in any way, shape or form. It also doesn't help that the show does sugar-coat the antics of other, more fan-favourite characters so as not to offend the audience. The events of A Storm of Swords pretty much destroy Tyrion as a character, reducing him to a vile-spirited murderer in the finale as he realises how his attempts to be (in his own way) honourable and fair have backfired on him. The TV show doesn't hold much truck with this, making Tyrion a killer only in self-defence and allowing him to retain the veneer of heroism rather than complicating and darkening the character as Martin does in the novels. It's a lazy and obvious choice for a show (and series of books) that shines the brightest when not doing the lazy and obvious.

Still, whilst some elements are hard to swallow or excuse (and nor should we), the fourth season of Game of Thrones is, when it is on its game, still highly watchable, entertaining and the most epic ongoing TV series ever made. The problem is that the series isn't hitting those best moments with the frequency that it really could with some cleverer and more subtle writing, and sometimes lets itself down by chasing controversy which it really does not need to do.


401: Two Swords (****)
402: The Lion and the Rose (****½)
403: Breaker of Chains (***)
404: Oathkeeper (***)
405: First of His Name (***)
406: The Laws of God and Men (****½)
407: Mockingbird (****)
408: The Mountain and the Viper (****½)
409: The Watchers on the Wall (*****)
410: The Children (****½)

Forthcoming: Season 5 (March/April 2015)

Game of Thrones: Season 3, Episodes 6-10

The second half of the third season of Game of Thrones is more inconsistent than the first. After the strongest five-episode run in the history of the series (seven, if you count the last two episodes of Season 2), the show suddenly screeches into fillersville and some of the worst excesses of Season 2 come back to haunt the viewer: characters wheel-spinning for episodes on end and lots of characters tramping around Northern Irish woods and vaguely hoping it looks like they are thousands of miles apart from one another.

The Climb is the weakest episode of the season, though it still has some very strong moments such as the barbed confrontation between Olenna Tyrell and Tywin Lannister. Diana Rigg and Charles Dance bring their all to this scene of courtesy and threats and it pays off very well. The actual Wall-climbing sequences are visually hugely impressive, amongst the best things the show has ever done, but the saccharine final image and the uncharacteristically awful CGI in the final shot let down the hard work elsewhere. Aiden Gillen, whose performance as Littlefinger has been underwhelming throughout the whole series so far, gets a rare opportunity to shine in the role during his closing monologue, which is one of the more disturbing scenes the series has done. However, in the middle we have a whole load of random scenes thrown together to see what sticks, and it doesn't really work.

George R.R. Martin has written the two best episodes of the whole show so far, so it's a bit disappointing that The Bear and the Maiden Fair does not rank on the same level. It's solid, and certainly a welcome improvement on The Climb, but it lacks the oomph of his other episodes. The stand-out scene of the episode, Jaime Lannister's Big Damn Hero moment, was even moved over from another episode. Dany's confrontation with the Yunkish envoy is also very good (with some exceptional dragon CGI). Theon's appearance may be one torture scene too many for people (but fortunately the last one of the season), although it does confirm what the novels only later vaguely infer. Gendry standing in for Edric Storm is also a good example of a change from the books that is economical and makes sense, though the route Melisandre takes him to get back to Dragonstone - going hundreds of miles out of their way to King's Landing - does not.

Second Sons is also pretty decent, with the titular mercenaries being well-introduced. Ed Skrein nails Daario's arrogance and it's good they dropped his flamboyant appearance from the books (one of the more unconvincing elements in the books is Daenerys falling for a blue-haired ponce), although I'm not sure going for the long-haired pretty boy look was a viable replacement. Tyrion's wedding is a suitably grim affair, the Dragonstone scenes are very well-done (Liam Cunningham is killing it this year as Davos) and the long-awaited 'Sam the Slayer' scene is handled well.

The Rains of Castamere is the most talked-about episode of TV drama this year, and it's easy to see why. The build-up to the infamous Red Wedding is handled well, with some great tonal variations (especially due to David Bradley's superb performance as the loathsome Walder Frey) and a late-building sense of dread. The concluding ten minutes is one of the best sequences in the history of the show, with Michelle Fairley, Richard Madden and Michael McElhatton all delivering stand-out performances. Both Jon and (thankfully) Bran's stories also suddenly kick into high gear. We also get a great action sequence as three of Dany's retainers storm the gates of Yunkai to great effect. Whilst it's not quite as well-paced and measured as And Now His Watch is Ended, it's not far off and of course the final scene is even more powerful and impressive.

Mhysa, the season finale, has to settle for merely being a well-written epilogue. There's an interesting feeling of melancholy as certain characters cross paths for what might be the only time in the whole series (Sam and Bran, most notably) and others take hugely significant decisions (the Dragonstone scenes avoid repetition from earlier storylines and get Stannis's story onto a different track). Other storylines are let down by the promise of more filler and wheel-spinning: Arya looks set to spend most of Season 4 yet again traipsing around the Riverlands. Pairing her with the Hound for longer than in the book is a really good idea, but I'm not sure I can take a whole season of it. The revelation of Ramsay Snow's true name and nature, and Theon's final capitulation to his will is a terrific scene (though it doesn't quite justify the static nature of their story through the whole season), as is the brief ironborn sequence on Pyke. Unfortunately, another key scene - where Tywin lies the smackdown on Joffrey - is underwhelming, with none of the normally-reliable actors hitting the highs of the corresponding book scene. Some terrific and iconic dialogue, such as where Tyrion and Tywin share for a moment the horror that they may have put a new Mad King on the throne and Tywin ominously hints he won't let that come to pass, is also lost, which is a shame.

The most awkward moment of the episode is in Daenerys's storyline. After a strong and decisive start to her storyline this season, it just tails off at the end, not helped by that awkward crowd-surfing scene with its unintended-but-still-uncomfortable overtones of the great white saviour. This can be subverted by what's coming up in Daenerys's storyline, but for now it feels like a really weak way to end the season compared to the very obvious alternative option.


306: The Climb (***)
307: The Bear and the Maiden Fair (***½)
308: Second Sons (****)
309: The Rains of Castamere (*****)
310: Mhysa (****½)

Forthcoming: Season 4 of Game of Thrones will start airing in March or April of 2014. Season 3 should be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in February or March 2014.

Game of Thrones: Season 3, Episodes 1-5

The first half of the third season of Game of Thrones - adapting the first chunk of the novel A Storm of Swords - is a major improvement on the second season. Last year, the need to compress the massive Clash of Kings into just ten episodes, bringing in many new characters, locations and storylines whilst servicing the existing characters (and in some cases, such as with Daenerys, Robb and Jon, bringing in lots of new material to make up for their lack of material in the book), resulted in a season that was disjointed, muddied and with pacing that was all over the place. Whilst individual scenes were well-written and well-acted, the show as a whole suffered (apart from the final two episodes, particularly Blackwater, which were excellent).

Season 3 money shot alert!

With Season 3, the producers have ten episodes to adapt a lot less material from a book (A Storm of Swords has been split over the third and fourth seasons), meaning that we get more of a strong focus on storylines and on characters. Thematic elements, which fell by the wayside in the crammed second season, have been allowed to re-emerge. Changes to the story feel a bit more natural and organic this year, and overall the series has regained some of the strengths of the first season. It's also benefited from the confidence installed by the popular success of the second season, particularly the much more ambitious and frequent use of CGI to flesh out the world. The success of the third season (so far) is all the more notable because they've had to bring in a lot of new characters, such as Olenna Tyrell, Thoros of Myr and the Reeds, and integrate them into the already-packed storyline.

It hasn't been completely plain sailing, of course. In particular, the third season cops some flak from the mistakes of the second. By reducing the complexity of the military movements of Robb, Tywin and Edmure's armies in the second season, the producers removed much of the motivations for Edmure Tully's actions in the third (not to mention the producers are now paying for not introducing the Blackfish and Edmure in the first season; the people I watch the show with who are not book-readers were pretty much lost by this development). Thus the show needs to back up and unconvincingly retcon the military actions of House Tully from last season. In addition, the writers have rather badly messed up the clarity of the storylines relating to House Frey and House Karstark, resulting in the entire Robb/Catelyn side of the story descending into a mess (and Michelle Fairley is a superb actress, but her constant state of grief for numerous episodes in a row is a little wearying).

Elsewhere, the storyline perks up considerably. In Astapor Daenerys takes charge of her own destiny and Emilia Clarke's acting takes a major step up from her wheel-spinning arc in the second season. The re-addition of Ian McElhinney to the cast as Ser Barristan Selmy is also a major plus, creating an interesting dynamic with Iain Glen's Ser Jorah Mormont that both actors spark off with aplomb. Even the dragons have more to do, and Nathalie Emmanuel's Missandei appears to be a solid replacement for the ill-advised dispatch of Irri at the end of the second season. The translation scenes (where the slave-masters of Astapor insult Daenerys without being aware she can speak their language) bring an element of black humour to the story which is appreciated at this stage.

The Brotherhood Without Banners part of the story has also lived up to its billing, particularly with the superb casting of Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr (one of those left-field choices that has worked out brilliantly) and Richard Dormer's able performance as Ser Beric Dondarrion. The sequences in King's Landing are as watchable as ever, and are even taken up a notch by the arrival of Dame Diana Rigg as Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns. Rigg's performance is awesome, combining intelligence with a dangerous cunning, and she lifts every scene she is in. The Dragonstone scenes are also good, with Stephen Dillane making even the defeated Stannis seem sympathetic, especially once we get to see his disturbing home life (fleshed out by an excellent turn from Tara Fitzgerald as the demented Selyse and a charming performance from Kerry Ingram as their disfigured daughter, Shireen).

The scenes beyond the Wall are a little lacking, however. Ciaran Hinds makes for a great Mance Rayder, but the character is lacking some of the nuance from the novels. Mackenzie Crook has so far been under-utilised as Orell and Kristofer Hivju is one of those casting ideas which looks awesome in theory but hasn't quite worked out in practice yet (though it's still early days for him). Speaking of which, the master of 'good on paper but lacking in practice' remains Aidan Gillen's stilted and uncomfortable performance as Littlefinger. Given Gillen's evident acting talents from other projects, the blame for this can perhaps be placed on the writing (TV Littlefinger is a considerably less complex and far more obviously villainous character than in the novels). However, Gillen's decision to adopt a Christian Bale, Batman-style grow for his voice is presumably his own and adds an unwelcome element in incomprehensible surreality to what is already the show's Achilles' heel.

Despite these issues, the show as a whole has definitely rediscovered some form this season, benefiting from a tighter focus on characters and storylines and less sprawl (or, rather, less sprawl-per-episode). This season has already given us one of the very best episodes of the series so far with And Now His Watch is Ended, in which the pacing is excellent, the action beats are measured and the performances are stunning. The following episode is almost as good, and with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's angry confession of why he really killed the Mad King, the show may have found its best-acted single scene to date.

301: Valar Dohaeris (****)
302: Dark Wings, Dark Words (****½)
303: Walk of Punishment (****½)
304: And Now His Watch is Ended (*****)
305: Kissed by Fire (****½)

Forthcoming: The Climb (5/5/13), The Bear and the Maiden Fair (12/5/13), Second Sons (19/5/13), The Rains of Castamere (2/6/13), Mhysa (9/6/13)

Note: there will be an extra one-week break between episodes eight and nine to accommodate the Memorial Weekend holiday in the United States (last year the show took a major ratings hit from it, so HBO is skipping it this year).

Game of Thrones: Season 2

War has gripped the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. As Robb Stark, the King in the North, leads his armies into the Lannister homelands, so Renly Baratheon leads a vast host out of the Reach, planning to take King's Landing and depose the boy-king Joffrey. A new player has also entered the game, with Renly's older brother Stannis claiming the Iron Throne and gathering allies to his banner. As the Seven Kingdoms slip into chaos, the Night's Watch mounts a large expedition into the lands north of the Wall, investigating reports of wildling forces gathering and White Walkers on the march. Thousands of miles to the east, Daenerys Targaryen and her newly-hatched dragons seek refuge in the fabled city of Qarth, but there finds betrayal and deceit waiting for her.

The second season of Game of Thrones picks up where the first season ends and - somewhat loosely in places - follows the events of the second novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Clash of Kings. For those who enjoyed the first season, it is possible to thoroughly (but not unreservedly) recommend the second. The standards of acting, set design and production values remain stunningly high. The original castmembers continue to do superlative work (it seems redundant to say it, but Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister is fantastic throughout) and the new additions make an immediate impact. Most impressive is the addition of Stephen Dillane as Stannis Baratheon. If George R.R. Martin wrote A Song of Ice and Fire to be unfilmable, he wrote Stannis to be uncastable: an uninspiring martinet who nevertheless commands loyalty. Dillane knocks a tricky role out of the park and nails the character from the novels brilliantly.

Most of the other new castmembers are also impressive: Liam Cunningham makes for a likable Davos Seaworth, Natalie Dormer brings her Tudors-honed skills of political conniving to the role of Margaery Tyrell and Oona Chaplin makes a good fist of a somewhat cliched character with Talisa (more on her later). Even the minor roles are compelling: Tom Wlaschiha's Jaqen H'ghar, Patrick Malahide's Balon Greyjoy, Michael McElhatton's Roose Bolton and Simon Armstrong's Qhorin Halfhand are all superbly-played, with the actors getting across their characters' personalities in just a handful of scenes apiece.

Production wise, the show has stepped up in the second season. CGI is more plentiful and more artfully employed, with some excellent establishing shots (one of Harrenhal towards the end of the season is particularly evocative) and some great shots of the direwolves (now real wolves matted into the shots and enhanced) and dragons. That said, the show continues to be inexplicably reluctant to have shots of marching armies, continuing the first season's fine tradition of showing us twenty extras and claiming there's another 99,980 blokes just standing out of shot, which is more than a bit unconvincing.

The second season does have some issues, however. The pacing and tightness of the story feels off compared to the first season. Some of this is because of the source material: A Clash of Kings is less well-structured and focused than A Game of Thrones. However, the TV series does increase these problems beyond those of the book. In the novel the absence of Eddard Stark as a central protagonist is somewhat alleviated by Tyrion Lannister taking on this role. Whilst Tyrion does step up to the plate in the second season, a lot of his scenes and subplots (such as the infamous chain sequence and the build-up to it) have been eliminated, reducing his role considerably. Whilst understandable from a production standpoint, it does make the second season feel a bit more aimless and disjointed than the first.

A core criticism from some quarters revolves around the second season's faithfulness to the book. In fact, some of the changes for the second season were necessary. The chain storyline would have added layers of complexity, time and expense to the Battle of the Blackwater that were best avoided, painful as it was to lose them. The much-criticised relationship between Robb and Talisa is actually a change for the better, in my view (note: I appear to be the only person on Earth to think this). Having Robb disappear for a whole season and reappear with a new wife out of nowhere would have been nonsensical (the sort of thing you can do in a book but not in a visual medium) and following Robb's off-page story on the screen would have been fairly dull, forcing him to spend most of the season parked at one castle. The changes mean we get to know and (hopefully) feel some sympathy for Talisa rather than wondering what the heck was going on and why did Robb make such a silly decision.

Other changes also work. Keeping Tywin at Harrenhal for most of the season simplifies the tactical movement of the war (again, something you can do in the book with a map to hand which is harder to get across on TV) and allows for some excellent scenes between Charles Dance and Maisie Williams's Arya Stark. There's an interesting feeling of amiable menace in these scenes. Unfortunately, the writers over-use the idea a little with too many scenes saying the same thing, and under-play the idea of Arya reminding Tywin of a young Cersei, which could have been milked further (this idea should horrify Arya, but she doesn't really react to it).

Other changes are much less successful. Having cast the excellent Simon Armstrong as Qhorin Halfhand, it's then a monumental waste to change the climax of his story in the novels (an iconic moment which ranks amongst many readers' favourite scenes of the entire series) to something more confusing and less well-motivated. Non-readers will find the scene a bit off, but for readers the knowledge it could have been far superior by simply sticking to the page is extremely frustrating, especially as what we get instead (Jon Snow running around in some snow for two whole episodes in a row) is so inane. The same is true of Daenerys's storyline, which is even more inexplicable. The decision to bulk out the Qarth storyline with the addition of a political thriller storyline is actually a good one, but is completely wasted because between the 'twist' (Dany's dragons being kidnapped) and its resolution (in the House of the Undying) we only get a couple of scenes of Dany looking worried and talking with Jorah Mormont. It would have been better to have cut out the interminable Red Waste scenes at the start of the season, gotten her to Qarth faster and given this storyline more depth. Instead, what we get is notably inferior to the novel (alleviated by some excellent visual imagery in the changed House of the Undying sequence) which, given this storyline's slightness in the book, is an impressive achievement.

The season overall, is less compelling than the first. The storyline is more fragmented and, in some cases, the changes from the TV series result in scenes far less powerful and impressive than what is in the novel. I am certainly not a book purist and welcome changes which improve the telling of the story in a dramatic medium, but in many cases the TV series adopts a course which is less interesting, less impressive and less resonant than the books. However, it is notable that the most successful storylines this season - Theon's, Tyrion's and the beginnings of the Brienne/Jaime relationship - are the ones that hew closest to the novels.

The season does make amends for its many faults with the ninth episode, Blackwater. For the second season in a row it's George R.R. Martin's episode which is the stand-out of the season, an epic battle sequence lasting almost the whole episode but also featuring some sublime character development alongside the arrows and wildfire explosions (Cersei, Sansa and the Hound getting more development in this one episode alone than the previous eighteen episodes of the series combined). Absolutely brilliant stuff that restores the faith that, when it pulls itself together, Game of Thrones can stand alongside HBO's best dramas in quality. It just needs to do so more consistently.

The second season of Game of Thrones (overall: ***½) has finished airing but should be available on DVD in February or March of 2013. Season 3 will commence airing on 31 March 2013.

201: The North Remembers (****)
202: The Night Lands (***)
203: What is Dead May Never Die (***½)
204: Garden of Bones (***½)
205: The Ghost of Harrenhal (***½)
206: The Old Gods and the New (***)
207: A Man Without Honour (***½)
208: The Prince of Winterfell (****)
209: Blackwater (*****)
210: Valar Morghulis (****½)