TV Review: Game of Thrones (2011-????)

HBO is running a new series called Game of Thrones. Generally, I’m a sucker for fantasy stories and I’ve liked much of what HBO/Showtime have produced in the past decade. But this one leaves me cold so far. I’ll give it a couple more weeks, but right now I’m finding it hard to care.

“A Game of Thrones” is the first book in an epic fantasy series called “A Song of Ice and Fire.” This series is written by George R.R. Martin. “Thrones” was first published in August 1996, won lots of awards in 1997, and has since been turned into several games. In January 2011, after HBO announced it would be showing this series, the book finally hit the New York Times bestseller list.

The series stars Sean Bean and a host of other people who have all been involved in one fantasy show or another, and apparently tracks the book fairly closely. . . I haven’t read the book but the author says it tracks. The series runs 10 episodes. There is no word yet on a second season, though the critics are raving about the series. I’m not.

One of the producers has jokingly described the series as “The Sopranos in Middle Earth,” and that’s a good place to start with my issues with the show. For starters, comparing this to Middle Earth is like comparing Chucky Cheese to Disney. Middle Earth is a rich environment with lush forests, impossibly green fields, incredible mountains, visually stunning cities, elaborate costumes, a universe of interesting creatures, and cool magic. Thrones is like one of those “historically accurate” fantasy stories. . . lots of wood, furs and torches, brooding ‘til ye can’t brood nay more, and nary a magical creature in sight. In fact, I put “historically accurate” in quotes because people tend to mistake the ruins of castles today for an accurate assessment of how people lived back then, and they never realize that castles actually contained plush furniture, carpets, stained glass and were often painted. . . things that are all missing in Thrones.

The lack of supernatural creatures also makes the story feel cheap and hollow. There are hints of supernatural creatures, but that’s all they’ve given and the series pretty clearly intends to use them sparingly if at all. Because of this, Thrones loses its “fantasy” feel and comes across more like a highly inaccurate retelling of Medieval English history.

Thrones is nothing like The Sopranos either, and that’s the real problem. The Sopranos was a unique, fascinating and un-clichéd look into the normally highly-clichéd world of mobsters. The juxtaposition of their calm daily lives and average personal problems against the sudden violence of their profession, made the show emotionally stunning. And the characters you wanted to like, but who kept making stupid mistakes all the fricken time, really pulled you in. Thus, you cared about these people because you wanted then to succeed, but you also got these periodic jarring reminders they were monsters. You get nothing like that in Thrones.

In Thrones, the BIG problem is a lack of focus. There are too many “main” characters and none of them are really main characters. They are all doing too many things that are broadly too similar to make their individual stories very interesting. The director also mistakes boring with dramatic. We would watch Tony Soprano stare at a door for five minutes because we were pretty sure something HUGE was about to happen and because we were trying to crawl into his head. None of the Thrones characters has risen above cliché enough for us to care what they are thinking. And frankly, it’s not even easy to figure out who is who yet because there has been too much information presented too fast. You just can’t dump the history of three or four families, two or three kingdoms, and several sets of old friends on an audience all at once. Then you add in long, dull, “meaningful” scenes involving people you don’t know and couldn’t care less about and the pull of the remote becomes very strong.

Moreover, the writer seems to have problems with anachronisms. For example, about half of what these people talk about is sex, which is odd for a fantasy story and seems like the author is trying too hard to find filler. Further, for reasons unknown, the writer has decided to occasionally toss in a couple modern swear words. It’s not like the anachronistic Tourettes Special that was Deadwood, but it’s enough to keep knocking me out of the story.

Romeo: “Hark, what light through yonder window breaks? Yo, b*tch! It's me!”

King Arthur: “Lancelot, Quest forth and find me the Holy Grail that we may show it to our peasantry, the dirty f*ckers.”

Nope, doesn’t work.

I’ll give this a couple more weeks, but I’m not hopeful. How about you?