Game Of Thrones

Around a month ago, I mentioned that I was looking at renting TV series boxed sets from LoveFilm (or LoveFilm By Post as their Lords and Masters, Amazon, call now them.) Well, I’ve given it a go and the first set was Games Of Thrones. We’ve already watched the first series and are currently on the second (although the second is courtesy of a friend of ours rather than LoveFilm). I did have some reservations about this but I have to say that I’m completely hooked.

The reservations I did have were about the sex and violence in the series and I have to say that it earns its 18 certificate. In a way, this is a pity as it is the sort of thing that our 13 year old son would enjoy (he is a big fan of Tolkien) but the nudity and gory deaths don’t make it entirely suitable for him: not that I think he would be particularly bothered by that - it’s just not the sort of thing I can imagine a 13 year old wanting to sit down to watch with Mum and Dad. In fairness the nudity and sex scenes do seem to be integral to the plot and I’m sure that where it is called for, and entirely necessary for the dramatic content of the story, the actresses would be willing to keep their kit on for an entire episode.

I haven’t read A Song Of Fire And Ice on which the series is based (Game Of Thrones is actually just the first book of the series) so I was worried that the large number of characters and their complex relationships would be confusing. In fairness, I have had to read through the accompanying sleeve notes on a few occasions but the portrayal on screen does explain the plot and characterisations quite well. One advantage for me not having read the books is that I don’t know what is coming next although I was forewarned by our friend not to get too attached to the characters. This is good advice as there have been several occasions where a character actor that we really like appears on screen only for them to exit stage left in the next episode in a particularly gruesome manner.

One other interesting thing is that I am now starting to get lots of cultural references that had previously passed me by. Back when there were only three TV channels most people would have a fair idea of cultural tropes even if they hadn’t seen the original reference: whether this was the Fortsyte Saga, Upstairs Downstairs, Doctor Who or Bill And Ben. Now with literally hundreds of channels, many of which will not be available to the entire population, some cultural references can become obscured or reserved to small cliques of fans. This week has been quite interesting with the General Election coverage as I have been able to spot Game Of Thrones references in Charlie Brooker’s show, on some news reports and various social media quotations.

The worrying thing is that our political system now represents Game Of Thrones at all. I suppose it will make Prime Minister’s Question Time more interesting what with the random beheadings and full frontal nudity…