House of the Dragon: Be careful what you wish for, GOT fans

Disgruntled Game of Thrones fans have plenty of reasons to be pleased with House of the Dragon, which takes place in Westeros 200 years before the events of the GOT saga. (Is it a prequel when the characters are all new? Or more of a spin-off?) It has a lot of the things they considered missing from the much-despised final season of Game of Thrones. Based entirely on a George R.R. Martin book? Check. Shockingly violent scenes and scenes the squeamish (of which I am one) would have preferred to take place off-stage, such as a Medieval-style Caesarean? Check. Plots and characters that take their time, with slow build-ups rather than dragon-riders whizzing up from the South to the Wall in merely hours? Check. Zero plot armour? Check. (Granted, there haven't been that many surprising deaths this far, but there have been some – two protagonist love interests were dispatched pretty fast.) Brothel scenes? Check – though not as many as in Game of Thrones in its heyday. 

For my part, I found the characterisation a great improvement on what we got from the first season of Game of Thrones, which so many remember fondly but I struggled with. It's less a collection of the good, the depraved and the completely psycho than GOT at its height: the characters are considerably more complex. Also, what I enjoyed most in the original Game of Thrones were the royal intrigues in King's Landing rather than shenanigans beyond the Wall or in Dorne or Braavos. And what does House of the Dragon concentrate on? Royal intrigues in King's Landing. 

So, what's it like to watch the end result of all these wishes coming true? Kinda boring.

That's just my opinion, though. To do Game of Thrones fans justice, when being served exactly what they ordered, they have pronounced themselves more than satisfied, which is admirably consistent of them. And it's not a question of people making up their mind to love or hate a series before it has even aired, either. There was widespread wariness towards the idea of a Game of Thrones prequel (sort of) when the trailers came out. GOT viewers reserved their judgement until they saw the series, and then they lapped it up – the knotty language, the long-winded dialogue, all of it. As with the first season of The Crown, I'm wondering whether it's my attention span that's at fault. At the same time, I quite like Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which many viewers – often the same viewers who love House of the Dragon – claim is too slow. This, I admit, leaves me nonplussed. What, you can't get into the finding Sauron game, but you get into this sedately paced family drama?

But I suppose you could just as well turn the question around and wonder: how can I get into The Rings of Power, but find myself yawning in front of House of the Dragon? Yes, the pacing is slow, but you could say the same of Rings of Power. Yes, the dialogue is often cumbersome and faux-archaic, especially in the first episodes (surely saying "mine" instead of "my" is just bad grammar?) but so it is in Rings of Power. True, Rings of Power has a more epic sweep, but seeing as I didn't care for half of the settings of the original Game of Thrones, it feels hypocritical to criticise House of the Dragon for concentrating on King's Landing. Why is it that I can't get more engaged in "the Dance of the Dragons"? Especially as the villains are much more my kind of thing than the nut-cases in the original show? Take, for instance, Otto Hightower – the King's right-hand man (on and off), concerned with the welfare of the realm, but highly ambitious and not at all above feathering his own nest. He's played by Rhys Ifans, too. I really appreciate what must surely be a nod to the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck, but not even Otto is enough to make me enthusiastic about the show so far.

Perhaps the main fault, for me, lies in the personality of the protagonist, Rhaenyra Targaryen, Princess and heir to the Iron Throne. What is it with me and Targaryen females? Once again, I fail to warm to one. The trouble is, I don't see why we should root for Rhaenyra and not for Otto and his daughter Alicent. It's not that I'm not usually on the villains' side, but at least I can normally understand why their antagonists are supposed to be the good guys. Here, neither side really has the moral highground. Rhaenyra lies and cheats with the best of them, but she doesn't have enough charm to make her a likeable anti-heroine: instead, she keeps complaining about her lot. She spends years sulking after her father marries Alicent and gets a son (in fact several), as Rhaenyra fully expects to be displaced as heir because she's a girl. But her father Viserys, who may be the only halfway honourable character in the show, does not displace her, so what was all that sulking for? We are meant to think the decent Viserys is a "weak" king and Rhaenyra will make a better, "stronger" ruler because she's more gung-ho, but so far I've seen precious little real talent for state craft from her. She would probably be a hit in, say, 15th-century England with her "let's get on a dragon and blast'em" attitude, but I'm not at all sure this is always the best ruling policy. Give me peaceful Viserys any day.

Anyway, I can't say this TV series isn't ambitious or well acted, so if you loved the original Game of Thrones, by all means give it a watch. I think you will find Westeros very much as you left it.

The well-structured fantasy world of Netflix's Shadow and Bone

Now this is more like it. A little more than a year ago, I was hate-watching and groaning over the Netflix series Cursed. This year, Netflix provided a much more solid fantasy offering in the shape of Shadow and Bone (a second season has been confirmed, whereas I believe that Cursed has been cancelled). 

This series seems to have benefited hugely from being based on a string of novels written by Leigh Bardugo, which are neither graphic novels nor Young Adult. Without being as dark and brutal as Game of Thrones, the series felt more grown-up than most of the graphic novel- or YA-based stuff I've seen (though it's still fantasy - in terms of grown-up-ness, it'll never be Middlemarch). The characters were more complex and interesting, and the dialogue was funny and sharp, which leads one to believe that the source material must be well written too.

Book adaptations have their own problems, and Shadow and Bone doesn't avoid them altogether. The first season did feel a bit over-stuffed. There's a whole side plot about a girl called Nina which has no bearing on the rest of the story until the second season is set up in the end. I'm sure that in Bardugo's novels, the reader is given plenty of reasons to care what happens to her, but in the series so far, her scenes are more of a distraction. The two main plots - about a girl who is discovered to have magic powers and a gang of doubtful characters who are tasked to abduct her from a heavily guarded castle and bring her to their city for a life-changing amount of cash - don't gel as well as one would have liked. Barely are the protagonists from both story lines united, than they are separated again, and the stories run parallel most of the time instead of becoming fully integrated with each other. Nevertheless, what the series has is promise: you feel that there is a solid foundation in terms of the characters and the world they inhabit which can be further built on in future seasons.

Now, the show's not a new Once Upon A Time. I don't think I'll ever become obsessed by it or care desperately about what happens to anyone in the series. But I didn't care overmuch for the characters in Game of Thrones either, and I still had a good time with it (mostly). If you like fantasy which is fairly light-hearted without being downright daft or ridiculously formulaic (as in Cursed), it's well worth a watch.

What helps to ground the series is that the author of the original books has clearly put some thought and work into the world building. In this world, magic is wielded by the grisha, which consist of different groups with different skill sets. There are those with traditional elemental magic skills like fire magic or wind magic, but there are also other kinds of specialities. There are healers, heart-renders - who can do anything from manipulating your feelings to downright killing you, but it's all connected with the heart - fabricators who have a magic skill for inventions etc. 

Though I have a weakness for fairy-tale-like magic where anything goes, this kind of specialised magic-wielding and the rules and limitations it imposes add some structure and are a safeguard against making any one character too powerful. With shows like Once, magic objects with wonderful properties can suddenly appear and be used to solve a problem (or raise one) in an episode or story arc, but then quickly be forgotten, which leads to plenty of plot holes ("but why didn't they use object X from episode Y?"). Also, if you have extremely powerful characters, new ways must constantly be found to temporarily divest them of their power or limit it so they can get into trouble when the story demands it. Here, the limits of the magic are built in: if you are a grisha who can wield shadows, then that's what you can do, but you can't, say, heal a loved one or control the wind. I was also relieved that the magic-making wasn't merely connected to the four elements (which is so often the case), because frankly, that concept has become a little old. Not only the magic, but the politics of the different countries and regions feels thought through. Here should be plenty of material which can be made use of in the future.

It's true that the central romance between the heroine Alina - who is discovered to have the legendary power of "sun summoning" which many believed to be just a myth - and her childhood friend Malyen (Mal for short) left me pretty cold. They are both orphans who have been friends forever, and when Alina's powers are discovered they are separated and long to be reunited. Their behaviour made me impatient - if they are so crazy about each other, how come they didn't manage to work themselves out of the friend zone long ago? Alina's pining makes her reluctant to embrace her new powers. There's a large, dangerous shadow-realm divide called the Fold dividing her country, which she is supposed to be able to consign to oblivion. Maybe she should focus a little more on that and a little less on Mal, who never had the guts to put their relationship on a less platonic footing? The Crows - the would-be abductors - are more colourful and bring more zest to the proceedings.

What of the villain, then, General Kirigan? (Yeah, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that a shadow wielder called "The Black General" turns out to be the villain.) Well, he's pretty good, though for my part I wasn't blown away. He's built up so well that the first proper meeting the viewer has with him feels like a let-down. Kirigan is played by Ben Barnes, who also played Prince Caspian in the Narnia films. He's conventionally handsome, and for a villain-lover like me it's a disappointment when a villain looks too much like a traditional hero. It turns out his pretty-boy looks has its uses, however, and it has to be said Barnes can glower very convincingly when he needs to be menacing. Not in Rumple's league, then (which could hardly be expected), but preferable to most of the awful bad guys in Game of Thrones, and decidedly better than evil monks.      

How not to make a TV fantasy series: Cursed on Netflix

As I'm now in my last summer vacation week, one could argue that there are better things to spend my time on than the Netflix series Cursed, which is supposed to have something to do with Arthurian legend but doesn't really. Nevertheless, I have been "hate-watching" the entire ten episodes of the first season (there will probably be more, but I hope I'll have enough sense to stop here). There is something fascinating about the way the series tries and fails to be an epic fantasy adventure by ticking a number of boxes, and at least, unlike The Luminaries (which I don't know if I'll be able to finish), it is bad in an intermittently entertaining way.

The series is actually based on the books (graphic novels, maybe?) of two writers, otherwise one would have thought it the brain-child of a room of script-writers expressly hired by Netflix to come up with the Next Big Thing fantasy-wise, something that can be billed "the new Game of Thrones". I'm not that happy that every fantasy series now is supposed to ape Game of Thrones - I'd much rather see "the new Once Upon A Time" - but the occasional Game of Thrones-iness is not the problem. Indeed, I begin to see why GoT was so highly praised, if Cursed is the kind of dross fantasy fans usually have to contend with. There's a lot of blood, chopping off of limbs and nice side characters being killed off for shock effect (when a kindly lady gives the heroine a pep talk, I knew at once that she and her helpful husband were for it), but otherwise there are no noticeable links to the ambitious, knotty intrigues of GoT. 

The main story of Cursed is simple enough. There is the heroine, Nimue, who is neither a dark sorceress and beguiler of Merlin (that would be awkward, seeing as he's her dad) nor the usually nice and pro-Arthur Lady of the Lake. (She is in a lake at one time, but only to kill enemies.) When she gets hold of a magic sword, it responds to her, and there's never any question of handing it over to Arthur - here a happy-go-lucky wannabe knight and love interest to Nimue who (mostly) doesn't mind playing second fiddle to her. Nimue belongs to the fey, a host of magical creatures who are hunted down and killed by evil monks. When her village is destroyed, her mother with her dying breath tells Nimue to get a magic sword the mother's been hiding to Merlin. When she finally meets Merlin, though, Nimue starts to question whether handing the sword over to this slippery customer is such a great plan. Instead, she holds on to it and becomes the leader of the poor, persecuted fey who - wouldn't you know it - have formed a Resistance. Only, the sword (never named as Excalibur, but plainly meant to be it) is coveted by the king and a rival pretender as it would shore up their claims to the throne. The evil monks aren't too fussed about the sword, except as a source of magic, but they want to burn Nimue and all of the good, noble, diversity-embracing close-to-nature fey, because the fey are different and the evil monks are basically Medieval-style Nazis.

I have seen many a weird take on the King Arthur story in my day, but none which strays so far from any resemblance to any Arthurian legend, at least any I'm familiar with. It's not that Cursed stands the usual stories on their heads - that has been done many a time - more that it's completely unrelated to the usual stories. The characters with names from the King Arthur story don't stand in any recognisable relation to one another. Arthur is not related to Uther Pendragon, and if he ever makes king it will have to be by default when all the kick-ass heroines are gone. Gawain, Percival and Lancelot have no connection to their Round Table counterparts - they're just important characters in the general scheme of things who for some reason have been named after the knights in question. Arthur's sister is called Morgana, and she does dabble in magic towards the end, but that's it. It's also worth noting that the Morgana Le Fey of legend in this series is one of the few good (so far) protagonists who are not fey. Here is an instance where the writers could have dispensed with the Arthurian name-dropping altogether and given the characters different names, and nothing would have changed. It's not as if magic swords and sorcerers can't exist outside of an Arthurian-legend context.

Even as its own thing, though, this series is bad. It's so simplistic it's laughable, and in love with its own wokeness in a way that will make few converts. Fantasy can include a great deal of warrior heroines and melting-pot casting without it seeming strange or programmatic - after all, in a magical make-believe land, anything goes, and you're not in any way restricted by historical facts from the "real world". Still, the self-congratulatory tone grates - "look, we have lesbian nuns, aren't we enlightened?" What bothered me most, though, was the treatment of the Big Bad - the evil monks, otherwise known as "red paladins".

Menacing monks and shady clerics are something of a mainstay of popular entertainment, and usually I don't mind it - you have to be able to separate the character from the faith. Normally, somewhere in the story, someone will make a little Cadfaelesque speech on how the churchy bad guys in question seem to have forgotten all about the Christian virtues of kindness and mercy etc., or it will be made clear in some other way that the fanatics have got the wrong end of the stick. I'm not sure firmly secular writers always feel very warmly about inserting this kind of "look, we're not saying all Christians are bad" parenthesis in their work, but it's a show of good manners. We get nothing of this in Cursed, though. Here, all Christians are bad, period. The red paladins are backed up by a (literally) pox-ridden Pope. There's a Mother Abbess at one time who doesn't give Nimue away (without giving a reason: here a Cadfaelesque speech would have slotted in nicely), but otherwise, the nuns that are helpful to her are those who aren't in fact pious at all. The only nun displaying signs of piety is a young girl who's a murderous nutcase. We have several scenes where characters pray before an altar and are troubled because they don't feel any response - Morgana, at the end of such a scene, throws away her cross and joins the fey, as if there has to be a choice of the one or the other. Peter Mullan as Father Carder, the head Evil Monk, does his level best, but he's given nothing to work with, as every religious speech he or any one else gives feels false and hollow. The writers clearly don't "get" religion, which is fine, but they would in that case have been on firmer ground had they invented a religious sect of their own to play the baddies (similar to the followers of "The Lord of Light" in Game of Thrones). Quite apart from religious allegiance, it's a problem when a story is unable to explain the driving forces of its villains. As a comparison, the moral system of the Star Wars films may be black and white, but Palpatine still makes a darn good case for the Dark Side. 

There are good things in this series, such as the beautiful animated intro, some of the acting (the guy who plays Uther overacts painfully, though), and the way new plots and characters get thrown into the mix so as to liven things up a bit - a leper king, a pirate queen, a Viking pretender, a probably hostile old spirit taking over Morgana etc. I thought they tried too hard with making Merlin quirky and different at first, but he works well enough in the long run, and as a Swede I never object to seeing a Skarsgård as part of the cast. But if you want a popular-culture take on King Arthur and co., you're better off with Merlin (also on Netflix).   

Game of Thrones final season: Is it bad that I rather enjoyed it? (Spoilers galore!)

Sooo. Game of Thrones season eight. I feel a little bad about setting my thoughts on this season down at all, because judging from the Internet sources I've seen, many real GoT fans hated it. And though I came to enjoy the series, mostly from the second season onward, I can't call myself a die-hard fan. I didn't particularly want to like the series, only came round to it reluctantly and have always claimed that it was over-hyped. Of course it's much easier to enjoy a somewhat rushed final season of a series if your expectations aren't sky-high to begin with. It feels a little insulting to those more invested in the series and its characters to smugly state "well, I like it", especially as I see where they're coming from with many of their criticisms.

Having said all that, I've started writing blog posts about Game of Thrones, in spite of knowing nothing (in true Jon Snow fashion) about the books and suchlike, so I'll finish. It's hard to resist when there's plenty to discuss.

People have claimed that the series started going downhill once the scriptwriters ran out of books to adapt (George R.R. Martin hasn't yet finished the book series A Song of Ice and Fire on which the TV series is based - but you knew that already). From what I've found out from some superficial net surfing, the first four seasons are based on the books, and there was some material left for season five as well, but it was here the scriptwriters had to start flying solo in some instances. Now, if I would have had to guess where the join between adaptation and new content was in the series, I would have said season seven. Season five and six don't feel very different to what went before - though it's remarkable how many characters who have no role to play in the final showdowns get killed off in season six (no complaints from me in most cases). Season seven did have a more pacy and soap-operatic feel to it, but I kind of enjoyed that. I was never much of an admirer of the "edgy otherness" of Game of Thrones, and the more it resembled a regular epic drama, the more pleased I was. But yes, there was a change of tone. The dialogue in the earlier seasons was pretty full (at least it felt that way) of rambling speeches which were finished off with some strong lines, and the plot strands followed the same pattern in a way - they ambled along for a time, then there was a dramatic payoff. How much you enjoyed the plots depended on how good the payoff was and how well the road to getting there worked for you, much like the character monologues. In season seven, the monologuing is pretty much history, as are the plot lines that take some time to develop. It's less of an amble, more of a rush to the finish line. Season eight carries on the trend.

Ironically, though, the scriptwriters came into trouble with the fans not just for things that felt different to the "book seasons", but also for things that follow the tradition of the whole series - the "anything can happen" factor of earlier seasons clearly made them feel that they had to serve up some plot twists so as not to make the outcome too predictable. Here's the thing with predictability, though: sometimes an outcome is predictable because it's clearly the one that makes most sense. Injecting unpredictability just for the sake of it can be risky. For me, the most predictable character arcs in season eight were often the most satisfying. Theon was killed while redeeming himself by defending Bran, whom he had betrayed by invading Winterfell with his Ironborn troops many seasons back. Ser Jorah died in battle protecting his beloved Daenerys. Varys was dragon-executed for treason after yet another plot against his current ruler candidate in the higher interest of the realm. These deaths felt logical, and true to the characters.

As for the twists - I, for one, completely bought Daenerys's descent into darkness. It's fair to state beforehand that I never really cared for Daenerys. Having her torch King's Landing with her one remaining dragon after the town had surrendered boosted one of my particular hobby horses: the dangers of self-righteousness. I've already touched on how much I dislike murdering for moral reasons, and Daenerys did a lot of that. She was always implacable to her enemies, her rhetoric to her troops was continuously bloodthirsty, and she had intended to conquer King's Landing with all dragons blazing until Tyrion persuaded her otherwise. As her faith in his judgement dwindled, it's not that much of a leap to imagine that she would want to return to plan A. Many seasons ago, when she conquered Mereen, she had the whole slave-owning nobility of the town nailed up along the highway. Daenerys fans have pointed out that this is completely different from setting innocents - including children carrying affecting little wooden toys - aflame as the Mereen nobles were "bad men". However, as we later learned, there were one or two quite decent coves among them - inevitable when you go down the collective punishment route - and besides, there are some things so horrible that they remain wrong whoever you're doing them to.

Once Daenerys had a licence to mass-slaughter, as it were, it's not that strange that she ends up crossing another line. And after all, it's not unheard of in the history of warfare to specifically target civilians and level towns - resident kids and all - to the ground. The inhabitants of King's Landing weren't slaves: they had the option of leaving their homes or helping Daenerys out with conquering the city (as the slaves of Mereen did). However, though they loathed Cersei (as illustrated in her Walk of Shame), they still preferred her to an invading warrior queen and let themselves be used as pawns in Cersei's plans. Daenerys had already learned in Mereen, by the workings of the Sons of the Harpy, that civilians can pose a threat. If she needed arguments to rationalise the atrocity, they weren't impossible to find, especially as she was so convinced of possessing the moral high ground.

As for many of the other twists I wasn't too keen on them, so I can understand the fans' frustration there. Bran - who ended up king - was one of the first characters of the show I cared about, but back in the day when he was still a bright boy and hadn't merged with a mystical being which enabled him to have visions, detach himself from everyone and make vague statements in an annoying monotone. From the get-go of him becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, he was something of a dead loss, and it seems foolish to appoint someone who gives you lines like "I don't really 'want' anymore" to a position which requires savvyness in worldly affairs. He does have a great Small Council, though. Jaime haring back to Cersei after finally getting together with Brienne was a strange plot move - it's as if he hadn't had any character development the last five seasons. Jaimienne was the only GoT couple I shipped, but I felt that it would have been better if they had remained just mates if this was to be Jaime's end game. His "no, sorry, I'm not redeemed" speech might actually have worked then. And what was the deal with having Arya kill the Night King? I did think they backed away from making her a Grand Assassin Heroine quite neatly in the final episodes, though, so I can live with it. Her giving up her Kill List (which I was never a fan of) courtesy of The Hound and instead settling on a life of exploration felt like a good way of ending her story. Better Christopher Columbus than Titus Andronicus (yep, she went there).

Heroine misfire

I was counting on making Game of Thrones my blog subject for this instalment, as I'm now completely up to speed with the series. I'd watched all of the previous seven seasons in time for the final season premiere and, thanks to an opportunistic subscription to HBO Nordic, I'm now able to see new episodes only a day or so after they air in the US. The trouble is, the latest episode threw us such a curve ball that I realise I'll have to wait until the end of the series before going off on a rant which might be rendered unnecessary by future plot twists. For now, though, I'm with the disgruntled fans who think that Jon Snow was robbed.

Instead I'll have to move to the other end of the fantasy spectrum and the sugary confection that is The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which I watched quite a while back. The theme addressed, though, will not be that far from my current issues with Game of Thrones, as it has to do with what makes a good heroine, something I've touched on earlier. Not that the heroine of Nutcracker has much in common with the supposed heroines in GoT. Her main fault is blandness, which is not something you can accuse the women of Westeros of. The way that the creators of Nutcracker have tried to "fix" the blandness, however, is symptomatic of a specific heroine trend which makes itself felt in Game of Thrones as well as in family-friendly Disney films.

The heroine in Nutcracker, Clara, is a girl who's lost her mother at a young age. Still grieving, she doesn't realise that her father is mourning too, and that his attempts to soldier on with life do not constitute a betrayal. The setting is Victorian London - which is a bit unexpected as I would have thought families called Stahlbaum and Drosselmeyer would be hanging out in Berlin or Vienna - but it hardly matters as Victorian London has seldom looked prettier. Clara is given a box which belonged to her mother as a Christmas present, but the key is missing. However, at a lavish Christmas party at her godfather Drosselmeyer's, the traditional hunt for Christmas presents leads her to the key, but also into another world where her dead mother was once Queen and where she is now hailed as the new leader.

The plot is generic fantasy stuff, reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and a hundred yarns about the Chosen One, and there's a plot twist you can spot from a mile off. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed the film. It was just the sort of light-hearted fluff one needs once in a while to rest one's brain, and it looks gorgeous. It was directed by Lasse Hallström, and if like me you have a fondness for his feel-good formula, you could do worse than to see it. But Clara remained a bore throughout. The scriptwriters thought it would be enough to endow her with inventive skills - the same shorthand for "see, she's brainy!" as was tried on Belle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, and with the same indifferent result - and to make sure that she went into clinch with the Big Bad herself, climbing waterfalls and whatnot in the process. These empowerment traits just felt tacked on, and don't tell us anything about Clara as a person. Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy, the kind of character who professes to be good but to whom you would rather not entrust as much as a pot plant (see also Galinda in the musical Wicked and the Blue Fairy in Once Upon a Time) is a great deal more fun.

This is consistent with the trend I alluded to earlier: an overreliance on making your heroine "kick-ass". Action hero stunts themselves do not make a heroine interesting - unsurprisingly, as they do not make a hero interesting either. What a heroine needs is personality. The reason I like, say, Rey in Star Wars is not that she can wield a light sabre, though admittedly it's a plus. It's that Daisy Ridley who plays her can sell her to me as a complex character with relatable feelings and insecurities. A character who has a strong personality doesn't have to kick ass to be interesting: she can stay at home and make everyone beer and sandwiches if she so chooses and still be the focus of a story. Not that I'm suggesting that heroines should stay at home and make sandwiches as a rule - that would make the plots very boring. I'm just tired of film and TV series providers taking the easy route with female characters and including "look, she fights better than a bloke!" scenes only to show us how feministically minded they (the film/series creators) are. I frankly don't care about their feminist credentials. Give me a strong plot and strong characters (ideally including a brainy villain - male) and I'm a happy part of the female popular-culture-consuming demographic.

Game of Thrones seasons four and five: The Great Games

Things are looking well on the belated watching of Game of Thrones front. I got through seasons four and five at quite a pace, compared to season three which was really hard to get through. Though season four was more satisfying than season five, they both proved ideal TV entertainment for ordinary workdays when you don't crave anything too emotionally engaging. At this rate, I have a fair chance of catching up on the whole series before season eight starts airing (and it will probably be some time before it's accessible to Swedes, anyway).

Not emotionally engaging, I hear you say? But what about those dramatic set pieces from both seasons, where characters we have reason to root for are betrayed, raped, killed or put through the wringer in other ways? I know, but though the characterisation has improved a lot since season one - where I was almost gleeful about how clumsy it was - and there are now several characters I would describe as likeable, interesting and/or funny, I'm still wary of getting too attached. I wonder if this is just me, keeping my distance because of the character-murdering nature of the show, or if there actually is an estrangement effect built into it. Either way, watching Game of Thrones makes me feel like a spectator at the gladiator games so abhorred by Daenerys Targaryen: I'm absorbed by the drama  played out in front of me and mostly pick a side, but if the combattant I favour loses I shrug and move on to the next fight.

And like a gladiator game spectator, I sometimes feel a little dirty for watching the thing. The show's creators could, I suppose, explain the reason behind most of the individual gasp-inducing scenes we see by way of the dramatic payoffs they lead to. The accumulative impression you get, however, is that the show has a tendency to go for shock value just because it can, because it's the gritty Game of Thrones, isn't it? This impression is strengthened by the number of times a meal is made of some particular character's plight. I felt queasy twice while watching season five and was close to pushing the forward button (which hitherto I've only done once - during the castration scene and the prelude to it in season three). One time was when we see a nasty bit character hitting under-age girls in particularly questionable circumstances (he then gets his eyes gouged out and his throat cut, and no, that wasn't nice to watch either), the other when Cersei, admittedly a bitch of the first order, goes through a humiliation scene which goes on forever, and just so happens to be in the buff the whole time. We didn't have to witness either of these happenings in quite such excruciating detail. The tragic death in the penultimate episode was pretty drawn-out as well, but I sat through it, in my desensitised Game of Thrones state, mainly wondering whether the show's writers were referencing Greek mythology or were just complete bastards.

And yes, I know that the TV series is based on a series of novels by George RR Martin, and that the reason bad things happen in the series may well be because they happen in the books. Nevertheless, I suspect the TV series has a flavour of its own which isn't always pleasant. And it's not as if the payoffs we get really need all that build-up. It's a powerful image to see Sansa Stark and Theon Greyjoy prepared to leap off a steep wall because they realise that yes, there is such a thing as a fate worse than death. But did we really have to follow them every painful step of the way there?         

I should stop whingeing now, because I really enjoyed these seasons of Game of Thrones, and there was nothing in them that disgusted me as much as the Theon plot in season three. The wallowing-in-violence factor probably wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't feel that the show has been hyped for its flaws rather than its strengths. It's a good show despite all the slicing and dicing, not because of it, and it's largely due to the superlative acting throughout. In season five, we got such delights as Jonathan Pryce as the most charming and avuncular implacable fanatic you are ever likely to meet. I'm also pleased to see Anton Lesser as a disgraced scientist and friend of Cersei's, who as soon as he has the opportunity covers her up after her ordeal. It's moments like that which make me think that somewhere buried beneath all its self-imposed edginess this series has a heart after all.     

Game of Thrones season three: Shipping Jaimienne

I never came across the phenomenon of “shipping” until I became a Once Upon A Time fan – this particular kind of fan behaviour is pretty big in connection with Once. For those as ignorant as I, to ship two fictional characters is to really, really wish for them to end up in a relationship (hence “ship”). If the two characters are already a couple, you root for them to stay together and be happy. You go “aaah” over their romantic scenes, get upset over their break-ups and view any threat to their relationship with hostility. My delight when I found out that there are others like me, who obsess over the love life of their favourite fictional characters the same way or even more than I do, has been tempered by the circumstance that shippers, apparently, have something of a bad reputation among other fans. They can start “shipping wars” and turn the fandom “toxic”. I can readily believe that plenty of shippers go completely overboard, but crazy fan behaviour (confusing the actors with their characters, harassing writers etc.) tends to be the same whether it’s shipping-based or not. I see no reason for not indulging in some shipping, as long as it’s done responsibly and without becoming a complete pest about it. For my own part, my obsessions tend to be less with a particular couple and more with individual characters (i.e. villains), with whom I am prepared to ship practically anyone as long as my favourite’s getting some.

I will give sceptics of shipping and romantic relationships in drama in general one thing, though: if romance is to be made an important part of the story, it has to be done well. It is generally done well in Once: even if you might not be entirely convinced by all the show’s pairings, a lot of effort is put into the relationship side of things. Now in Game of Thrones, on the other hand…

Which finally brings me to the topic in hand. At long last, I have finished watching season three of Game of Thrones (at this rate, I will never catch up with the rest of the world with my GoT  viewing), and yes,  I’m still interested enough to want to continue with season four. There were times during this season, though, when I was prepared to give the rest of the GoT saga a miss. There are characters who annoy me (Daenerys Targaryen, a soulfully pretty, slave-liberating, somewhat self-righteous contender for the Iron Throne) or don’t interest me at all (principled, pouty Jon Snow), so whenever the story centres on them I’m tempted to twiddle my thumbs. Then there’s the excruciatingly drawn out, deeply unpleasant storyline centring around Theon Greyjoy – already the unluckiest bastard in all the seven kingdoms – being held prisoner and tortured in scene after scene by a sadistic captor who seems to be doing it just for kicks. This was the plotline that nearly made me give up on GoT altogether, because the writers seemed to be torturing Theon just for kicks as well. His sufferings in no way bring the story forward, and yet (to judge from some stray comments on the Net) they are apparently expanded upon compared to what happened in the original novels. For pity’s sake, why? It really bugged me, and I don’t even like Theon very much.

And then there are the romances, which for the most part are unengaging. Several of them follow the same template, too. Tyrion Lannister falls in love with a beautiful slave girl with a mysterious past who doesn’t appear to be very wedded to the Lannister cause. Robb Stark falls in love with a beautiful female medic from another realm who isn’t very wedded to the Stark cause. Jon Snow falls in love with a beautiful “wildling”, i.e. a girl who belongs to the tribes which The Black Watch (which Jon forms part of) is always driving away from the northern border, and who – understandably enough – has no truck with his cause whatsoever. These love interests are little more than horizon-widening plot devices. There’s no interesting dynamic between the characters in the couples in question. The men love the the women because they’re hot. The women love the men, because… they just do. The relationship between Jon and Ygritte the wildling girl takes a potentially interesting turn, but mostly, whenever one of these pairings are on screen, even I find myself longing for some derring-do instead.

There is, however, one potential relationship that shows promise. Jaime Lannister isn’t a character I’ve mentioned before, as I regard him as more or less a waste of space. I suppose I should give him points for trying to be the witty villain who tells his enemies unpleasant truths about themselves, but the fact is, he’s just not very funny, which makes his attempts at wisecracking more irritating than anything else. In this season, the imprisoned Jaime is entrusted to the female warrior Brienne, whose mission it is to engineer a hostage-swap where he’s traded for the Stark family’s two daughters. All sorts of things go awry, however. After having showered insults over Brienne for a long part of the way – mostly on the theme of how unattractive she is – Jaime finds himself minding when she stands in peril of being raped, and comes up with a stratagem to save her. Brienne, for her part, feels herself honour bound to fight Jaime’s corner when the soldiers who pick them up viciously turn on him. Throughout Jaime’s and Brienne’s subsequent adventures, they start looking ut for each other, and come to respect each other.

It might not lead to romance, but I’d love it if it does. If not, at least we’ll have a properly built-up relationship of some sort between a man and a woman which doesn’t hinge on the woman’s sultry charms. The Jaime-Brienne dynamic isn’t the only reason I’ll persevere with Game of Thrones – there are other things to admire, such as the overall first-class acting, the deft plotting which juggles a large number of characters and storylines skilfully, and the no-expense-spared production values which make all those grim fortresses and wealthy slave cities look so convincing. But I confess, at the moment, I’m kind of shipping it.

Mad hype

Nope, I don’t get it. I’ve watched five episodes of the madly praised Mad Men without coming any closer to understanding what the fuss is about. And this is all the time I’m going to waste on it: I won’t make the same mistake as with The Collection and spend hours on a TV show that I don’t enjoy in the vain hope that it will get any better, just because there’s some slight improvement after the first one or two episodes.

It may sound harsh, but though I understand that television can be considered an art form of sorts, it still has to entertain. Theoretically, I can buy that one could read a book in order to improve one’s soul rather than be entertained, though it’s hardly something I tend to do – I read for pleasure. The pleasure factor is even more important when it comes to TV, though. No-one is going to give you kudos for watching something on the gogglebox, however much it’s been hyped.

And my goodness has Mad Men been hyped; it’s supposed to be the height of high-quality drama. When Downton was still airing, this was the kind of show it was compared unfavourably to – and if we Downtonites felt like sharpening our knives, our hostility was hampered by the fact that Julian Fellowes watched and admired Mad Men, too.

So what did I find when watching it? The first two episodes were downright clumsy. In episode two, one of the ad men suggests to the new girl in the office that they should “go to the zoo and see what the animals are up to”. This is exactly how this show feels: going to the zoo that is the US in the late Fifties and early Sixties and see what the human animals are up to. Look, how they drink and smoke! And how the men tell sexist jokes, and make a pass at everything in a skirt, and how the women have to bear it, and then there’s the casual racism… Oh, shocking, shocking.

One politically incorrect reviewer praised Mad Men because he thought (or pretended to) that it depicted the ideal life: lots of guilt-free smoking and hot babes. This was disingenuous, though. We are clearly meant to tut-tut in our enlightened way about all that was going on, and so close to our own age too. At the end of the second episode, I felt quite depressed at the thought of having to continue with it, but I've heard it said that the series picks up after three episodes, so I persevered.

It did pick up a little bit, and spent more time exploring the characters and less pointing out what horrible times they lived in. The problem is that the characters aren’t that worth exploring. Never mind not igniting my passionate engagement, as my favourite TV dramas do (especially when an intelligent villain’s happiness is on the line): Mad Men doesn’t even spark the mildly benign interest I take in the characters in Game of Thrones. While I still don’t care a lot about the GoT crowd, I don’t mind spending time in their company. A few episodes into season three, I even find myself kind of “shipping” a possible, unlikely romance. But no character in Mad Men is interesting or likeable enough to give a fig about even for a moment – and the depressing thing is that I think it’s deliberate. The men are all jerks. Don Draper, the protagonist, is a little more pensive and tormented jerk than the others, but that’s it. The women – whether “liberated” or “conventional” – are ciphers. We see a lot of the action through the eyes of Peggy, the new secretary, but I have no idea why we should root for her especially. She doesn’t seem to be that smart, considering that she sleeps with the baby-faced jerk Pete Campbell at the end of the first episode. Her worldly-wise colleague Joan looks like a million dollars, but what personality does she have apart from being worldly-wise? Heck if I know.

Hype really is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, you might very well start watching a praised-to-the-skies series hoping you’ll dislike it, like I did with both Game of Thrones and Mad Men. On the other hand, you’ll most likely give it more time than you would a less well-known and less well-spoken-of series – because if even Julian Fellowes thinks it’s great, then there must be something to it, right?

Five episodes must be considered  giving a series a fair trial, however. I could see how it could possibly make decent-enough, meditative post-gym viewing (not a lot happens in each episode) – not that I’ll continue with it even for that. But a subtle and sophisticated masterpiece? I think not.

Shape up, Littlefinger - or, on second thoughts, don't

My attempt to catch up with the Game of Thrones phenomenon is trundling along. I'm now half-way through season two, and I admit it's an improvement on season one, not least script-wise. It's sharper overall, and Tyrion's lines are funnier, so Peter Dinklage gets more to work with. Also, as this is the season where the actual "game of thrones" starts in earnest - a number of would-be kings are fighting each other for the throne, or more properly speaking two thrones - the stakes are higher. The characters are fleshed out and on the whole well-acted, not least because the series is full of British thesps for some reason (not all of them have very rewarding parts, though).

However, much remains the same. The script can still be ponderous, with enigmatic monologues that neither bring the story forward nor illuminate the characters to a great extent. The villains are still reassuringly, plot-functionally vile. Joffrey - now king - behaves predictably nastily in every single scene where he appears. Charles Dance in armour has shown up by now and looks a treat, but is no threat to my peace of mind so far. As Tywin, the head of the devious Lannister clan, he is introduced skinning an animal while talking about family honour, and then spends most of his time warlording. That's hardly shrewd villainy of the Tulkinghorn class - any thug can fight. In one episode I recently watched, Tywin did recognise at one glance that the disguised Arya Stark is actually a girl dressed as a boy. Now that's more like it. If, before long, he also twigs that she happens to be the lost sister of his enemy, he might still be going places villain-wise.

The one I should be rooting for most among the numerous GoT cast, though, is Lord Baelish, aka Littlefinger, who's not really that much more villainous than most of the rest of the characters. One pleasing feature of this series is that it doesn't put bravery and heroism above intelligence - Tyrion gets by on his wits, and he's easily one of the most likeable protagonists. Baelish, for his part, is a political survivor and schemer who'll ally himself with whoever lets him stay in power. Now, I truly love political schemers, but for the second time in a relatively short time period I find myself underwhelmed by a character who, on paper, looks tailor-made to be an object of my villain-loving affections. First, it was George the dishy banker in Poldark. Now it's Baelish, who somehow fails to gives me that "wow, he's like the Joseph Fouché of Westeros" feeling.

Maybe it's because I don't really get where they're going with this character, and it's not an enigma I find especially intriguing. Aiden Gillen certainly looks the part as Baelish - like Machiavelli, only handsomer - but I can't make out the way he underplays it. Now, I realise I'm spoiled at the moment in the villain-snarling department, but shouldn't a back-story monologue full of seething resentment be acted with a little bit of, well, seething resentment? Also, Baelish is saddled with one of those unrequited passions that have lasted a lifetime, where his loved one has never given him a word of encouragement. It's a ticklish motivation to carry off - if you've been stuck on one chick since boyhood without getting anywhere, even a villain-sympathetic audience like myself will sooner or later wish you could just get over it and find another girl - but Alan Rickman nailed it as Snape in the Harry Potter films. In contrast, Baelish's supposed devotion to Catelyn Stark never quite convinces. Honestly, you have to be able to do the Wounded Villain Heart Routine - if there were a Bachelor's programme in being a good villain, this would be second-semester stuff. Maybe my tastes are too unsubtle, but if Baelish is supposed to be a man who buries his bitterness beneath layers of bland courtesy I, for one, can only see the bland courtesy.

But that's fine. I confess that I still enjoy Game of Thrones partly because I don't care too much about the characters. Though more fully realised than in the first couple of episodes, they still retain a certain chess-piece quality, and I'm fully prepared for them to be taken off the board at any moment. Perhaps it's because I read reviews of the series beforehand; although, luckily, I don't remember who will die, I remember that a lot of the main characters are heading for the chop, and also that one character will eventually be castrated and kept as a slave. Most likely, it's some defence mechanism that keeps me from getting too attached to anyone that may be heading for a gruesome fate. So much for raising the drama stakes by throwing in random killings and maimings - but I'm not complaining, as long as my heart remains un-squeezed.

The negative virtues of Game of Thrones (first look)

All the hype finally got to me, and finally I felt I had to give Game of Thrones (the TV series, that is) a go. So, years after everyone else, I've now watched half of the first season - and I feel strangely pleased that it's not better.

I had a lot of acknowledged fears about Game of Thrones - that it would prove a complete waste of time, that it would be impossibly grim and gory or that I would be fool enough to fall for one of its universally hated villains. But one unacknowledged fear, that I only admitted to after it was done away with, was that it would actually turn out to be a masterpiece of a series, and unquestionably superior to Once Upon A Time quality-wise. I would then be in the same position as with Great Expectations vs David Copperfield or Upstairs Downstairs (the original series) vs Downton Abbey: I would have to admit through gritted teeth that the first alternative is better objectively speaking, while in my heart of hearts preferring the second alternative because of its more satisfying villain content.

Luckily, Game of Thrones isn't that great. The plotting is often clichéd, the characterisation (so far) crude and the dialogue heavy-footed. What's more, a comparison with Once isn't really a given - the two series may both belong to the fantasy genre, but they have little in common otherwise. Game of Thrones concentrates on political intrigues; yes, there be dragons (not that I've seen any yet), and probably magic too, but the fantasy trappings are peripheral to the story, and you get no fairy-tale vibes at all. GoT actually has more in common with slightly ponderous period dramas than with most fantasy yarns Ive seen. It's like The Tudors, but with made-up characters - which some would argue makes it exactly like The Tudors.

So, how does it hold up as a Tudor-esque drama in its own right? I find it has other negative virtues, apart from the important one of not being better than Once:

It's not orcs-vs-elves fantasy: I have some problems with the fantasy genre, which is why I haven't really read that many books belonging to it, though I'll gladly watch a film or TV programme with a fantasy theme. Fantasy so often ends up as a fairy-tale with all the fun somehow sucked out of it. I think the trouble may be that fantasy writers, in their eagerness to impose some sort of order and method into the lawless lands of fairy tales, oversimplify matters and divide their imagined world into good, beautiful magical creatures like elves and unicorns vs bad, ugly magical creatures like trolls and orcs. In the frequent battle scenes, it's not hard to spot which is the army supporting truth and light. This is a lot less interesting than fairy-tale figures, who tend to have their own agenda and aren't lined up in some larger, overblown fight of Good vs Evil. Some of them may be more mischievous than others, but there's no fail-safe rule as to whether you'll end up better or worse for encountering them. I bet the poor girl who was left coughing up toads as a punishment for being rude didn't think the fairy who cursed her was particularly "good".

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with Game of Thrones, and that's one of its advantages - it doesn't use the plot setup of The Lion, the Witch And the Wardrobe, Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. Its protagonists are humans - not the most complex you'll encounter, true, but at least not impossibly noble harbingers of light or confusedly motivated minions of evil.

The characters aren't too engaging: In GoT, apparently, you have to be prepared for key characters being sliced and diced at a moment's notice. I've heard it argued that this is a big point in favour of the series: it adds real jeopardy to the scenarios played out. I can see where this argument is coming from. The fight scenes in The Musketeers would have been more exciting if there had been any chance that one of the Musketeers might actually cop it. Also, there are times, in my favourite TV programmes, where I've sighed a bit over "miracle saves" where characters who should be gone geese climb back from certain death or even come back from the dead because they're too popular to kill off (though sometimes, of course, this plot device feels completely justified...). To pick a fairly uncontroversial example, bringing Clara in Doctor Who back after she'd faced a suitably heroic and affecting death in "Face the Raven" was unnecessary in my book - we would have been able to handle the loss, and so would the Doctor.

Here's the thing, though. When you really, truly care about a character - when they may, in fact, be one of the main reasons you are watching a TV series in the first place - your first reaction to a random killing off of this character won't be "oh, what fresh and daring storytelling". It will be "sorry, what?!". Blood sacrifices are necessary sometimes in a TV series, for plot reasons or absconding actor reasons. But adding deaths simply to add "edginess" and a "who lives and who dies" factor? I don't know.

Happily, I don't much care whether the characters in GoT get sliced and diced or not. They're not interesting enough for that. Tyrion Lannister's likeable enough - you can see why he's a fan favourite, as he's what passes for a fully-rounded character in this story. But much of his appeal is down to Peter Dinklage's laid-back cynicism in the role, and even Dinklage struggles with a script that could have done with being a whole lot funnier. Other clever characters, like Lord "Littlefinger" Baelish and sort-of-spy-chief Varys, also lack a certain bite in their banter. Elsewhere, you see familiar tropes like The Noble Outsider Youth or The Girl Who Wants To Fight, Not To Marry. They're nice, I suppose, but if they get killed off, I won't be heartbroken.

The villains are decidedly not seductive: I would usually not count this as a virtue, but I have my reasons not to look for a new villain crush right now - I'm quite happy with the one I've got, thank you very much. And even if I were on the prowl, I would not like to fall prey to someone who risked making a "Top Ten Hated Characters in Television" list, which tends to be the case with GoT baddies.

No fear, though, because boy are the villains one-note so far. Prince Joffrey's a whiny brat who can be relied upon to behave in the most reprehensible way imaginable in any given scenario - because that's what his plot function is. A Draco Malfoy haircut can't save him, nor can comely Harry Lloyd save Viserys Targaryen from being anything else than the pathetic shit who pimps his sister to a savage war lord in order to get an army and then spends the rest of his time being spectacularly ungrateful. (Granted, the sister is tiresome.) True, I've not come across Charles Dance in armour yet - here's hoping he won't test my resolve.

I know all this is damning with faint praises, but I'll say this much for GoT: I enjoy it more than The Tudors or The White Queen. But guys, don't think we straight women viewers don't notice all those gratuitous brothel scenes and bare-chested lovelies. I'm not averse to objectifying myself - villain snogging scenes are always appreciated (though not in a GoT context) - but it hardly makes a series a grand work of art, now, does it?