HBO have been pioneers in the art of immersive television narrative ever since Tony Soprano decided to break the code of omertà with his shrink. Whether it was navigating the moral ambiguities of drug-infested Baltimore in The Wire or examining the precarious familial bonds of Six Feet Under’s morbidly delightful Fisher family, HBO have consistently produced shows of novelistic depth and invention. But even by their lofty standards, adapting George R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series must have seemed a herculean undertaking. It is an uncompromising epic that is equal parts dynastic melodrama and supernatural fable, and all of it rendered with a gritty verisimilitude that makes it as plausible as the power struggles of Imperial Rome (plus a dragon or three). And HBO cracked it. They took the dizzying complexity of Martin’s world and distilled it into a television spectacle that retained all of the novel’s sinister magic. Episodes became pop-culture events, with deaths in the show comparable to unexpected celebrity bereavements. But as it marches in lockstep towards its conclusion, a feeling washes over me that I can’t suppress any longer. Relief. Something has changed in the show I once loved and I fear it may be too late to bring it back.
As an avid fan of Martin’s jaw-dropping universe, I was conflicted when the show reached that strange impasse where it invariably had to reshape the material and forge ahead: presumably George R.R Martin has been on an eight year sabbatical to the actual Westeros to do research for The Winds of Winter. My suspicion is that he has overindulged on the fearsome cider at the Quill and Tankard. But my partisan vitriol towards the mutilation of Martin’s ‘sacred’ texts slowly gave way to grudging admiration for David Benioff and D.B Weiss’s ability to skilfully condense and refract Martin’s prose through their unique vision. Part of the fun became distinguishing which strands of necessary tinkering worked more seamlessly than others. Daenerys’s time in Meereen always stunted A Dance of Dragons and the show managed to rework that section into a far more fluidly realised vision of dystopia in the East. But I feel that the Greyjoys have always been woefully underserved by the showrunners. The gothic grandeur of Euron’s Kingsmoot was reduced to a random piss-up on a beach. Euron himself was transformed from Machiavellian enigma into the Robert Baratheon of the Iron Islands. As morally ambivalent as the show would like you to think it is, HBO were always likely to struggle capturing the nearly satanic savagery of the Iron Islanders whilst allowing room for identification with Asha – or is it Yara? What is dead may never die. But the show generally succeeded in fulfilling the expectations of both book fanatics and the broader viewing public.
But something certainly changed in the wake of Season 6’s splendid crescendo. The Battle of the Bastards saw Miguel Sapochnik bring a gritty realism to pitched battle that was reminiscent of Spielberg’s D-Day landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan. The Winds of Winter saw Cersei Lannister finally fulfil the crazed proclamations of Mad King Aerys by way of Michael Corleone. But Season 7 marked a turning point in proceedings. The season was cut to seven episodes, while the final season was shaved to six. Winter had finally come and the end was nigh. And that overarching framework has unfortunately backfired badly for the show. It has transformed into a schematic game of chess that leaves little room for narrative digressions or nuanced character conflict. Every character’s arc has become so intensely interwoven into endgame proceedings that there is scant time for idiosyncratic asides. What we have left is essentially recurring memes where characters once existed, and the opening of season 8 only proves that. Bronn is defined by fucking and fighting – we find him in bed with a trio of (surely HBO approved) nymphets. Samwell Tarly’s predilections are more bookish in nature, and we accordingly find him huddled deep inside the recesses of the Winterfell library (though to be fair, for the amount of time he spends surrounded by books in subterranean dwellings, you may be forgiven for thinking there is a fetishist dimension there). Witnessing Tyrion and Varys share the 100th eunuch joke in Game of Thrones history made me groan with exasperation. It would seem that Varys isn’t the only one involved in this show who has lost his balls.
One massive issue with the current season of Game of Thrones is the impenetrability of the Stark children. Hopefully this final season can allow the melancholic Stark brood to thaw their icy demeanour whilst ensconced within the walls of their childhood home. We can only hope. Through a series of traumatic experiences ranging from Sansa’s sexual degradation to Bran’s intimate exposure to horticulture, the Starks have been rendered about as emotionally relatable as the Night King. Sansa’s impish (ahem) refusal to embrace her Targaryan saviour and her insistence on creating petty palace intrigues is reminiscent of Cersei in her alcoholic pomp. Bran’s role as a pivotal cog in the resolution of Game of Thrones is clear, but it certainly doesn’t make the impassive Prince of Winterfell any more kinetic. Can you imagine the direction of Isaac Hempstead Wright in these last two seasons? Yes, we’re going for the five Valium look today kid, just look like you don’t know where the hell you are. The bloodthirsty Arya perhaps represents the Stark’s best hope of recapturing the emotional intensity that made The Rains of Castermere fall so heavily.
Tyrion Lannister – once the emotional centrepiece of the entire series and Martin’s favourite character – has been relegated to the role of Hand of the Queen and Chief of Exposition. Now to get into a slightly touchier area for some fans – the issue of Jon and Daenerys. They are crucial characters in the evolution of A Song of Ice and Fire – it’s there in the title. But as both reader and watcher, I have always found both characters slightly one-dimensional, beautiful lighting rods for the momentous events swirling around them. Jon’s courteous stoicism and Daenerys’ unrelenting pursuit of power leave little in the way for the type of psychological complexity that defined the likes of Jaime Lannister and Theon Greyjoy. And the show is currently grappling with the weight of their intertwining narratives. Watching the two fly around on their dragons was a welcome reprieve from the Sturm und Drang hospitality of Winterfell, but it ultimately led to a Mills & Boon moment of ‘passion’ that had distinct reverberations of Twilight rippling through it. Quick aside: Jon is Rhaghar Targaryan’s son, which would make Daenerys his aunt? The Lannisters send their regards.
In six weeks’ time this dissection of the show is going to seem a pallid thing compared to the inevitable grandeur of the finale. I have no doubt that HBO are going to pull out all the stops in reaching a new high watermark for epic television. Azor Azai will be reborn while mind-blowing timeline transgressions will be revealed: Bran may be the one responsible for the Hellboy reboot. But I just wish they had thought of a more elegant way of manoeuvring the chips in that direction. There was a time when I would wait feverishly for the next instalment, regaling ‘plebeian’ non-readers with anecdotal asides of what to expect. Now I tune in out of a sense of grudging duty, honour-bound by the hours of time I have invested in Martin’s rich world, waiting for the moment when I too can say: now my watch has ended.
