This preview blog steers clear of big spoilers, but it does contain some information you might not know. If you want to come to Game of Thrones cold, then here’s the short version: it’s great. For those undecided or just wanting to know a little more, here’s a slightly more in-depth appraisal ...
Like a great many others, I’d never even heard of George RR Martin’s epic A Song Of Ice And Fire series of fantasy books until a few weeks ago. All I knew of the TV version was that it was a fantasy drama, it stars Sean Bean and it was from HBO. I should point out that I’m not in thrall to that channel: often its output ends up overhyped so that perfectly enjoyable shows like Boardwalk Empire are criticised for merely being very good and not mindblowing. Thus I approached it with middling expectations; six hours later I was completely hooked.
The first thing that impresses is how good it all looks: it really does feel like a movie. Shot on location in Malta and Ireland as well as on colossal sets in Belfast’s shipyards, it looks like it cost a lot more than it actually did. It’s reminiscent of something legendary production designer Ron Cobb said of his work on Conan The Barbarian: he wanted to make that film 100% historically accurate despite it being set in a time and place that never existed. Production designer Gemma Jackson strikes a similarly authentic note here. They get the dirt levels right too, something very important in sword and sorcery tales. I did read some criticism that the Dothraki (who are cut from very much the same cloth as the Klingons) looked too clean. Well, they look fine to me and just because they’re a nomadic warrior tribe it doesn’t mean they have to be caked in dirt.
The camerawork and lighting is superb, never drawing attention to itself and offering an impressive variety of moods from candlelit interiors to snow covered woodlands. The Hellboy-ish title sequence should also get a mention; keep an eye on how the map of the land changes from episode to episode as we explore more of Westeros and its surrounds.
Next, the cast. Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Lena Headey, Iain Glen are all familiar, reliable faces. The actors seem to have been chosen not just as safe pairs of hands but as those who deserve meatier roles than we’re used to seeing them in. As the drama progresses we also meet Aidan Gillen, Roy Dotrice, Julian Glover and many more. After a while barely a scene goes by without some familiar and welcome face appearing. I think I saw Peter Vaughan in there somewhere and fans of swordplay movies shall be relieved to hear James Cosmo (Highlander, Troy, Braveheart) does, of course, make an appearance. What’s great is how the actors bring no baggage with them to their roles; it took me several episodes before I even recognised Jerome Flynn and I’m happy to report he kicks serious ass here. No one really gets a standout big dramatic scene in episode one, but Peter Dinklage as The Imp (the Queen’s dwarf brother) comes closest.
The same care is brought to casting the younger roles. Harry Lloyd makes a great, villainous deposed king; Kit Harrington makes a convincing bastard. Even younger are Isaac Hempstead as Bran and the revelation that is Maisie Williams as Arya – Williams doesn’t have much to do in episode one, but keep an eye on her. At a recent Bafta screeing her fellow cast members were full of stories of how she brought the readthrough to a halt with an early emotional scene or how she, naturally right-handed, learned her swordplay left-handed with no prompting because “that’s how it is in the books”.
Now for the storytelling, which some reviewers have found problematic. It’s easy to see why Boardwalk Empire, Battlestar Galactica and so on go for feature-length episodes to start things off. Game Of Thrones isn’t allowed such a luxury; instead the opening instalment, Winter is Coming, has to introduce more than two dozen speaking roles and several locations in under an hour. This clearly proved problematic and what you’re seeing tonight is a largely reshot version, with director Tim Van Patten paving over the work done by Thomas McCarthy (Scott Templeton from The Wire). Having seen the first half dozen episodes, I can’t think of a single character introduced in part one who isn’t later part of some significant event or meaningful exchange. We may not get the full background of the characters, I assume there are pages and pages of this sort of thing in the book, so many expecting a favourite line or scene may come away disappointed. The pilot is a little different in tempo and pacing than what follows, but it does do a bang-up job of setting up the drama.
The high density of the pilot may be the reason some of the early reviews were a little lukewarm, but Game of Thrones gets better and better with each episode. I suppose it’s somehow fitting that a show about iron-age people would draw out critics with an axe to grind, but it would be a shame if the fantasy setting put people off. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s all sword and very little sorcery. It’s been called fantasy for people who don’t like fantasy, but Mark Addy put it better: “It’s fantasy about people who don’t believe in fantasy.” Besides, to us here in the UK, aren’t the mean streets of Baltimore in The Wire just as much a fantastical place? I’d go as far as to say the show is a triumph; it’d be a shame to miss out on it due to a deficiency in imagination.