HBO's new Game of Thrones series, which premieres Sunday night at 9 ET, is a TV fantasy epic with grand ambitions -- more mature than Syfy's Merlin or Starz's Camelot, less cartoonish and video-game violent than Starz's Spartacus, and telling a more complicated story, with a more sprawling cast of characters, than anything this side of Middle Earth. But even WITH a scorecard, which HBO provided me, it's confusing at times, and only occasionally satisfying...
Based on the ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones is, or at least aims to be, a sort of medieval cross between Survivor and Deadwood. It's about power plays and expedient alliances, unchecked egos and ambitions, rival tribes with clashing values and goals, and an uneasy combination of established rules and violent lawlessness.
It all takes place in a land called Westeros -- only one letter off, perhaps fittingly, from the wild frontiers of "Westerns" -- which is divided into seven kingdoms. For the inhabitants of any of them, danger of one sort or another lurks in every direction of the compass, and over the entire land looms the threat of a sudden and lengthy change in the weather. When winter arrives, it's brutal, and can stay for years.
Thanks to my HBO-provided scorecard, I can name, and even spell, the various clans fighting for control of the Iron Throne. But I won't -- except to single out the Targaryens, whose white-haired princess Daenerys (played by Emilia Clarke, at right) is the most compelling character in the first six episodes. And the nomadic, brutal Dothraki warriors, whose leader is offered Deanerys in a clan-melding marriage of convenience. As power couples go, they're fascinating -- especially as their evolving relationship is reflected, and altered, in the bedroom.
Otherwise, it's individuals, not clans, who distinguish themselves in this giant narrative tapestry. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, a sharp-tongued hedonistic dwarf from the Lannister clan, is the one beacon of playfulness in this otherwise somber story.
Mark Addy, as King Robert (pictured at right), the Hagar-the-Horrible-ish head of the Baratheon clan, is winningly gruff -- and Lord Eddard's youngest son Bran (played by Isaac Hempstead-Wright), despite his boyish impetuousness, quickly rises to great heights.
Co-executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss adapted the story by Martin, whose own pre-novels TV resume includes writing and producing some episodes of Beauty and the Beast and the Eighties revival of The Twilight Zone.
The mood-setting and scene-setting pilot episode (shot on location in Northern Ireland and Malta, and on a Belfast soundstage) is directed by Tim Van Patten, whose resume, by this point, already has become absurdly impressive.
Early in his career, Van Patten was one of the young basketball-playing stars of The White Shadow, and guest starred in a few episodes of St. Elsewhere. As a TV director, Van Patten hit gold -- one rich vein after another. He directed a pair of Homicide: Life on the Street episodes, among other things, and soon became HBO's go-to-guy and all-around utility ace director.
Think I'm exaggerating? For HBO, Van Patten has directed episodes of Sex and the City. The Wire. Rome. The Sopranos -- 20 episodes of that series alone. Three episodes of The Pacific. Four, so far, of Boardwalk Empire. And now, the first two installments of Game of Thrones.
I like this show, and its look (give production designer Gemma Jackson and costume designer Michele Clapton special props, so to speak, for their work here), and a few of its characters, enough to keep watching. But six hours in, I'm still not hooked, just intrigued.
It's much, much more satisfying, though, than, say, Showtime's The Borgias, and has just as much deadly and erotic intrigue.
Yet six hours in, I'm still struggling to identify, much less identify with, many of the various clans and characters. The complexity of the story, though, and of the characters populating it, will keep me coming back. At least for a few more episodes -- after which point, I'm in danger of being Throne overboard.