As a devoted watcher of hour-long cable dramas, a genre that by most accounts seems to be in its golden age right now, I was thrilled when my advanced screening copies of Game of Thrones landed on my desk this week.
While I wasn't familiar with A Song of Ice and Fire, the best-selling series of novels upon which the new HBO series is based (and am no huge fan of the fantasy genre in particular), I have spent so many happy hours watching the network's previous shows that I was ready to jump into this one headfirst, expecting all of the great writing, acting and production values that have distinguished series like The Wire and Rome.
As it turns out, Game of Thrones is just as good as I'd hoped, and allows plenty of room for the uninitiated to make inroads into its world. In a nutshell, the series is about a power struggle between rulers of the fictional continent of Westeros and is as full of suspenseful politics, intrigue, sex and violence as we've come to expect from the boundary-pushers at HBO.
Salon.com's Andrew Leonard puts it nicely: "A Song of Ice and Fire is to normal fantasy what The Wire was to typical cops-and-robbers drama, packed with grit, complexity and flawed human beings making their way through a corrupt and intimidating world."
With True Blood past its prime, and a new season of Mad Men still far in the distance, Game of Thrones fills the void in the current cable drama lineup regimen nicely. Check out the premiere on Sunday, April 17th and let me know if you agree.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
While I wasn't familiar with A Song of Ice and Fire, the best-selling series of novels upon which the new HBO series is based (and am no huge fan of the fantasy genre in particular), I have spent so many happy hours watching the network's previous shows that I was ready to jump into this one headfirst, expecting all of the great writing, acting and production values that have distinguished series like The Wire and Rome.
As it turns out, Game of Thrones is just as good as I'd hoped, and allows plenty of room for the uninitiated to make inroads into its world. In a nutshell, the series is about a power struggle between rulers of the fictional continent of Westeros and is as full of suspenseful politics, intrigue, sex and violence as we've come to expect from the boundary-pushers at HBO.
Salon.com's Andrew Leonard puts it nicely: "A Song of Ice and Fire is to normal fantasy what The Wire was to typical cops-and-robbers drama, packed with grit, complexity and flawed human beings making their way through a corrupt and intimidating world."
With True Blood past its prime, and a new season of Mad Men still far in the distance, Game of Thrones fills the void in the current cable drama lineup regimen nicely. Check out the premiere on Sunday, April 17th and let me know if you agree.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
