‘He taught me how to be a knight. Not just sword and lance, but honour…’
There was a time in my life when Game of Thrones was my favourite pop culture thing. I loved it like Jamie Lannister loves slaying kings. Unfortunately, it all went wrong with me and George R. R. Martin’s creation when the last few seasons of the TV adaptation were unwatchable and then the mostly dull spin-off series House of the Dragon failed to reignite my passion also. Thank the Gods then for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a show that has remembered what made the source material so great in the first place…
Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his little bald squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) roam the Seven Kingdoms looking for adventure. The problem with Westeros is that if you go looking for adventure, you’re just as likely to be incinerated by a dragon or sexually assaulted (probably not by a dragon) as you are to find any actual adventure.
Based on Martin’s excellent Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms harks back to the glory days of Game of Thrones by recalling the key components of that show’s success: world-building, compelling characters and humour. Claffey, a former Rugby player, is both physically imposing and convincingly naive as Dunc, and he shares an irresistible chemistry with Ansell as his right-hand man (boy?). The various Baratheons and Targaryens that make up the rest of the cast are similarly well drawn, and the tournament setting gives this first season a drive and a purpose totally absent from House of the Dragon. The fact that each episode is only thirty minutes long further adds to the propulsiveness of the plot.
The Game of Thrones franchise has taken a battering over the last few years, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms offers some welcome evidence that there is life in the old dire wolf yet. With Dunc and Egg now free to explore the seven (nine?) kingdoms in season two, it will be fascinating to see where showrunner Ira Parker goes from here.
