I’m a sucker for HBO produced TV shows. The Wire and Deadwood are easily two of my favorite shows ever. They rank up there with The West Wing. The latest offering is Game of Thrones, which is your typical sword and sandals fantasy epic. There are no dragons, but there are references to dragons and magic, even though we have yet to see magic either. It’s so good, I put aside some other readings (my stacks of Verso Books and New York Review of Books books) and started in on the series which currently stands at 4 tomes. This is a list of reasons why you should be watching it (it is torrentable).
The cliff hanger endings. Few shows do the cliff hanger well, but this show really excels. It’s all in the pacing. Ending on something shocking is not enough, because that’s easy to do. What normally happens, however, is that a show will feel stretched out in the middle so the real shocking development happens at the end. Usually, I’m put asleep by the middle so the shocking twist is lost on me. For a great example of this problem check out AMC’s latest offering in The Killing. GOT, however, manages to keep the pacing up throughout entire episodes and then still shock me at the end of the hour. The best ending was the recent one, episode 7.
Production quality. It was obvious from the first time I saw the title sequence that this show was going to be gorgeous. And the title sequence has been updating. It’s an inventive way of showing us the map of the world — this is the problem with reading fantasy books on an ereader because the maps are cumbersome to return to over and over — and as the story has introduced us to new locations the title sequence map has updated. The rest of the show is just pretty to look at. The colors are gorgeous, even the scenes set inside a northern castle where there are plenty of greys. The contrasts are also quite something, and here I am thinking particularly of these special trees, wierwoods, which are very colorful set within bland settings. The set designs are all well done, and the more spartan the set is supposed to be the more gorgeous it is. The costumes are also impressive.
Pretty people. Some really pretty people. Lena Headey is upstaged by Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington. I’ll also throw a shout out to Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) whom I’ve never before found charismatic and riveting.
Writing. I watch a lot of TV. Most of it I watch in the background as I go about my daily business. This show, like the above mentioned other great shows, are too intricately written. I miss too much. GOT demands your attention. Plot arcs that I thought ended in episode 2 suddenly resurface. It’s that good. LIke Deadwood some might have trouble with the language issue. It’s not quite modern English they are speaking, but it’s relatively easy to slip into and follow along.
Action. There is some gore. Okay, for TV there is a lot of gore. There are several sword fights and the show does it very well. The mature scenes are also very well done. The one in episode 7 haunts me.
Taking a break from the serious reading. It’s raining out, so no quick bike around the lake. I am all out of new episodes (Game of Thrones, The Killing, Justified) to watch and I just know that if I start up on Deadwood again, then that’s two days of my life I’ll never again get back. So, I read a David Sedaris column. He’s funny.