Game of Thrones (at last!)

Finally, only a few years after the rest of the world began to get over-excited about it, I have started watching the HBO TV series ‘Game of Thrones’, based on the books of George R.R. Martin. The first GoT book was published in 1996 and the HBO TV adaptation began airing in 2011 so I am only about 6 years behind the times. I think the first time anyone enthused about GoT to me was in 2013 when a friend visiting from Australia said how much he liked it. Since then both of my daughters have become utterly obsessed with it and are currently watching the latest series (7) as it comes out.

We started watching Series 1 together last week and have already got through to Episode 8 (of 10). It’s obviously very derivative – lots of the same ideas and themes pop up, for example, in Tolkien’s work, and there are many allusions to British history (Wars of the Roses) and geography (wild people north of The Wall) – but it is still fun. I am not a fan of the gore/violence although so far the worst scenes have been pretty short-lived and the nudity/sex is obviously gratuitous and serves little purpose in the story, but the programme isn’t actually as bad in either of these respects as I was expecting (perhaps it gets ‘worse’ over time).

With two episodes of Series 1 to go it is pretty obvious that there is a lot of fighting to pack in and I am expecting multiple key (up to now) characters to meet a sticky end before Episode 10 concludes. One of the tricky things is that there are quite a few things I want to look up in relation to the actors and influences but I don’t dare to do so because doubtless this will give away all kinds of plot details that I don’t need to know yet. I suspect that it will be necessary to watch Episode 10 immediately after watching Episode 9 – there is bound to be a dramatic cliff-hanger – so I think I am in for a GoT watching mini-binge tonight…