…a TV series that was better than the book it was based on.
I’m talking, again, about Game of Thrones. The first book was a bit painful but I still watched series 1 on TV.
Unusually for an American series it was 10 episodes of an hour each, rather than the 24 or so episodes of 20 minutes with at least 10 mins of adverts that make up most American series. A couple of the episodes were a little dull – but so was the book at those points.
But it was good. Definitely better than the book, which surprised me because the tv series was very close to the book – these things usually get distorted and the story changed once the TV people get their hands on it. It was well scripted to keep the good bits of the story without geting bogged down in unnecessary dullness the way the book did.
On a tangent I watched the kids film The Spiderwick Chronicles recently, it was great, but when reading about the story and the author later on you realise the film was snippits of about 4 books mashed together to make the film. It made a good film, which made sense and flowed, but I wonder how much you miss out on. If they thought the story would work as a film why not make them faithful to the books.
Anyway, back to Game of Thrones – a lot of the dialogue from the book was used directly by the actors – with more bits added obviously as there wasn’t a narration. Most of the extra dialogue to fill in detail not covered as dialogue in the book was added whilst people were having sex. In fact I’ve just discovered there’s a new word for it, made up because of Game of Thrones – “sexposition“!
And here we come to the first major problem with the tv series. The sex. There was so much of it. Most of it wasn’t in the books and was totally unnecessary. It may have been titillating to flash boobs and so on on-screen to keep people’s attention but added nothing meaningful to the story. If they thought the story was so weak they had to pad it out with sex scenes then the producers should have done something different. Or not adapted the story in the first place.
And now the other problem, linked to the whole unnecessary sex thing.
The children (mainly Ned Stark’s offspring) are portrayed as several years older than they are in the book. I can see why – you couldn’t have Daenyrys and Sansa as the 16 and 14ish that they are in the books with them getting married/betrothed/having a child. But they are still acting and speaking as if they are the age in the book – it doesn’t fit. Either keep the actors portrayed accurately as the books are – which makes sense. Or the directors/writers needed to change the language to fit the older child they are portraying.
Overall the actors were well chosen and roles were well acted – I think Peter Vaughan portrayed the blind master Aemon very well.
Interstingly, the TV series made me warm to characters I hadn’t particularly liked, or cared about before. In particular Tyrion – the dwarf youngest Lannister son had a great role, and I can see him growing in importance (but not stature) as the story progresses further.
At the end of the series I WANT to watch series 2. Unlike at the end of the book where I just wanted to know what happened to a few characters because it didn’t end neatly. But not enough to actually want to read the books.
What did you think? Better than the book? Worse? About what you expected?
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