When the last time a TV show or movie, really pissed you off? Proper lying in bed enraged, turning events in your mind. How could they do it? Why? That’s how good Game Of Thrones has been thus , a scintillating fantasy series prepared to twist its narrative knife deep, you too will be wounded. In the trade we call emotional engagement.

While it may not revivify its genre quite The Wire and Deadwood renewed theirs, there is a gutsy HBO maturity work in David Benioff and D. B. Weiss’ naturalistic adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s heroin-addictive fantasy books. A tapestry of family grievances sprawl across a pungent Borgias-meets-the-Roses quasi-Euro battleground named Westeros. The series dances a soap opera, a saga not a plot, good and bad points a sliding scale. heart, it’s the Starks (honourable, naive, brunette) versus the Lannisters (ambitious, depraved, blonde).

Martin’s skill is to keep the fantastical a distance (undead revenants stir behind a 700-foot wall of ice, and dragon eggs accompany an exiled queen) and delight the rich, violent, unpredictable events. As brought life, with a tincture of the modern, by the impeccable performances. Special praise Peter Dinklage’s sardonic dwarf Tyrion, Michelle Fairley’s Stark mother-bear Catelyn, and Sean Bean’s super-Beany silent glower Ned Stark.