Game of Thrones - At Bloody Last!

I could barely contain my excitement last night as I waited for 9pm to roll around. Once again being a satellite TV subscriber was about to pay off, because last night was the night when after some years of anticipation the HBO adaptation of George R R Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' series was going to start.

Book one of the series - Game of Thrones - has been made into a 10 part HBO TV series and is being screened on Sky Atlantic over the next few months. 'A Song of Ice and Fire' is an epic fantasy series set in a medieval European world in which characters whose motivations lie somewhere between the Borgias and the Sopranos scheme and betray each other for control of the Iron Throne - the seat of power for the realm of Westeros. I am hesitant to describe the series as belonging in the fantasy genre, since to do so evokes expectations of Elves and Hobbits and orcs running amok. Not a bit of it. The fantasy elements in 'A Song of Fire and Ice' are almost always alluded to or described by the characters therein as part of ancient myths that have no impact on the real world. Battles are fought without wizards or fantastic creatures, the cut-throat world of political machinations is fought over with words, blades and poisons rather than magic rings and spells. The characters in this world don't believe that the fantastical creatures of the Tolkien cannon exist - so when something otherworldly does finally happen, it has a huge impact.

What all this means is that the stories told are closer to what happens in The Wire than anything that would normally sit on the fantasy shelves as a book store. With a huge ensemble cast, plots that carry over multiple books and a healthy disregard of the lives of any and all characters, when reading the books you never know when a main characters is for the chop or when something said in an aside 500 pages ago is going to came back and be significant. Which makes it perfect material for HBO.

Last night's opening episode was dark and did as good a job as I could have hoped at introducing the characters that - with luck - will put the whole series up on the small screen (assuming George RR Martin ever gets around to finishing it - book 5 of 7 is out in July). Sean Bean and Michelle Fairley look every bit like the tortured souls Ned and Cat Stark should be given the strife and violence they've lived through. Lena Headey did a great job of not appearing to be the power-hungry schemer that fans of the book know Cersei Lannister to be, a few nice surprises coming up for anyone new to the series. Not just the casting, but also the sets, costumes and pacing were just about spot on - nothing cheesy, nothing that looks like it'll be dumbing the plot down for TV.

Maybe I'm too much of a fanboy to have a sensible opinion of this series (when Sean Bean first said "Winter is Coming" I gave an internal cheer - such is my fanboy-ness), but I thought this first episode was bloody great. I don't see why the series wont continue to be true to the book and bring its Machiavellian characters to a new audience. Hopefully I'll be able to post loads more about it as it progresses.