Game of Thrones on HBO – Season 1 Review

got dragon
Originally published July 2011 – looks like I got this right!
Game of Thrones, HBO’s latest original series, is simply the most fantastic series to come from HBO yet! Unpredictable, visually stunning, intelligent with its depiction of morality, GOT is also at times utterly shocking. The violence, completely justifiable and necessary to the storytelling, was at times enough to make my knees buckle.
Hands down, the best, most promising series from HBO since Deadwood.
If you have not seen this – start watching immediately!
This series is available on demand through HBOGO.com and on DVD.
From the opening credits against Ramin Djawadi’s original and indelible score, you know this show will be epic. Benefiting from the great source material, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice novels, this series is flawlessly executed. The intricate details of the series bring the viewer to another different, yet somehow familiar, world with big-screen-worthy star turns by familiar faces Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage. These two get the roles of their lives. One would hope an Emmy awaits for one of them.
At the heart of the show is a politically motivated morality play that mirrors the backdrop of a harsh, mysterious, and savage environment. Thrones is a fantasy world riddled with 40 year winters, ghostly nightwalkers, and a few dragons. This world is completely fascinating. You can’t look away. The production designers and directors deserve real credit here. There are no cheesy effects here and everything, no matter how outrageous, looks to be real. Not since Lord of the Rings has such a mythical world seemed so immediate. HBO is getting their money on the screen. Good thing, they’re spending a fortune.
It makes no sense to recount the plot here. It would take paragraphs and I’m afraid it still wouldn’t make sense. You need to watch it with subtitles activated as the broad Brittish-like accents can be hard to understand. So too, are the people, as many in their ratty clothes look similar.
I don’t want to communicate any spoilers but there are plot twists that will leave you with an open jaw. Look out!
All the plots involve loyalty and betrayal. Honor and deception. Virtue and Evil. You know, the stuff of all serious and high drama. I did say it was epic.
So, if you invest the time to become comfortable with this world unto itself, the dozens of key characters who are hard to understand and all look the same (and can stomach the violence), you are in for something truly special unlike anything brought to the small screen.
HBO drama is back in a big way and may finally have a real successor to the Sopranos in defining the what could be the greatest network ever!

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