BoxRoom of Thrones

Friday 15th April, two days before my birthday (And Sean Bean's I discovered) Jen and I went to the BAFTA place worrying at our peasant clothing surrounded by such poshness to see the first two episodes of Game of Thrones, based on George R R Martin's frankly bloody excellent Song of Ice and Fire series of books.

If the first 12 minute preview HBO released filled us with shaking excitement recently I reckon you can probably imagine how we felt sitting in front of the big screen with the booming sounds and sights of the finished show itself. Frankly, it's fucking amazing. Better than we could have hoped.

Very hard to view the show objectively though having read the books and knowing the stories contained within the whole epic so it really comes down to whether this was a good adaptation or not for this review. I don't need to go into details about how adaptations can fail to reproduce the books they're based on due to restrictions of time and budget and suchlike so with those restrictions in mind, does Game of Thrones work for the screen? Has it been ruined or changed mightily from the source material? Changed slightly, out of necessity, yes. Ruined? Not in the slightest.

The casting is excellent and the look and feel of it all is outstanding. The full effect of this world, the characters and all the shades of grey their personalities contain is bloody spot on.

Will this be a success? I seriously hope so. I do worry that it will be seen by some as a genre show "swords and mutton" someone called it somewhere (which I quite like actually) and that they won't give it a chance because of it. Such is the way of things. People unaware of the books coming to it fresh I'd be most interested to hear the opinion of because, as I've said, it's hard for me to view it objectively being a (relatively new) fan to the series who shook with excitement at the title sequence alone before being glued to the action in front of me praying for an early DVD release.

Can I recommend it? Yeah, I don't need to say really do I. Yes, by the way. Very yes.

A lot of work has gone into this. It feels real, the world looks lived in, the clothes and buildings look worn, the characters arrive fully rounded, the attention to detail is astonishing and I want a Direwolf for my birthday please.

Our tired selves got back from the screening and recorded a BoxRoom Podcast about it all. The local 24 hour shop didn't stock any mead, alas, so we made do with a good solid red wine to see us through. Have a listen and enjoy our favourable thinkings!