Blood spilt in battle between ‘Game of Thrones’ and new pretender
The author whose novels are being turned into a blood-andguts medieval drama to rival Game of Thrones has claimed the long-running blockbuster fantasy series includes explicit scenes as “sexplanations” to distract viewers from boring plot exposition.
Bernard Cornwell, whose Saxon Stories novels have been adapted by the BBC for its £10m Dark Ages drama series The Last Kingdom, said his fact-based stories were superior to the fantasy HBO drama, notorious for its graphic sex scenes.
Cornwell told Radio Times that he was not a fan of Game of Thrones. “So many characters. So many strands. You have to have large sections where the plot is explained; just have to sit there and be told what’s going on,” the author said. “This is very, very dull. So they put a lot of naked women behind it all.
He added: “They are called ‘sexplanations’ in the trade. My programmes will not need sexplanations.”
The BBC commissioned The Last Kingdom, which depicts Alfred the Great’s battle to the unify England in the face of the Viking threat, after missing out on the chance to co-produce Game of Thrones. Cornwell, 71, who previously created the Sharpe Napoleonic War novels, recently admitted: “If I were a commissioning editor at the BBC, I’d say, ‘We want Game of Thrones – boys, let’s have dragons and tits’”.
The BBC2 series, which launches next week, com- bines historical figures with fictional events and doesn’t skimp on the visceral, swordwielding violence. However the sex scenes are less explicit and nudity employed more sparingly than in its rival.
HBO has denied claims that sex is used gratuitously in Game of Thrones. Michael Lombardo, president of programming at the network, said: “As long as I feel that it isn’t a show trying to attract