WHY WE ALL ❤ GAME OF THRONES
It’s Sky’s most-watched entertainment show of all time – so why is everyone so obsessed?
There was once a time when enjoying anything involving dragons, dungeons or sorcerers was something you kept quiet about, along with knowing the words to all of Westlife’s songs and fancying Ed Sheeran. But then, in 2011, a TV show came along that was destined to change that perception in a VERY big way – HBO’S Game Of Thrones. At first, GOT itself was largely reserved for the geek squad, so unashamed were its sword-and-sorcery roots. A show featuring frosty zombies, incestuous siblings and killer babies made of smoke, based on a fiendishly complex and sprawling fantasy novel series, didn’t exactly have the whiff of success about it. So, despite the fact you could guarantee a pretty high nipple count per episode, viewing figures were modest to begin with, starting at 743,000 for season one, before falling to 522,000 for the second season.
But the show attracted a deeply loyal fan base, and through some avid word-of-mouth persuasion, more and more people started taking notice of this thoroughly modern fantasy offering. Somewhere between seasons three and four, the show saw a huge leap in ratings, which continued to increase year on year, until season six’s opener broke ratings records for Sky Atlantic when some five million of us worldwide tuned in to see if Jon Snow was dead, or alive, or both. And, until recently, GOT held the dubious distinction of being the most illegally downloaded show ever. But why?
CLASS ACT(ORS)
From Sean Bean to Lena Headey, Charles Dance to Dame Diana Rigg, the show is stuffed with serious talent, all of whom have created characters we either love or love to hate. X-men star Peter Dinklage is so adored as the wine-
swilling, womanising Tyrion Lannister that vague rumours about him being killed off in one season led to a flood of internet memes stating, quite firmly, “If Tyrion dies, we riot.” Conversely, we cheered as one when little shit Joffrey choked on his poisoned wine and Ramsay Bolton fed his dogs – literally. The show cemented the careers of its leads – Emilia Clarke (Me Before You), Maisie Williams
(The Falling) and Sophie Turner (the X-men franchise) have become serious box-office stars, while it single-handedly made Jerome Flynn cool again.