These days, I don’t subscribe to all streaming platforms at once. After running the numbers instead of just thinking “paying for a year is cheaper than paying for it each month,” I realized that unless you’re planning on needing that subscription for 9 or more months of the year, then it’s definitely better to pay by the month and then cancel when you’re not using it. So I haven’t had HBO for the past while, and there have been a number of shows I’ve really wanted to watch that I haven’t been able to.
I finally caved on Sunday and resubscribed for a month, and the first show on my list was A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. For a fan of fantasy, the production value, acting, story, and general feel of Game of Thrones shows has generally been fantastic. (Yes, there are exceptions, but I’d heard a lot of good things about this show.) Denisa and I started it right away.
We finished the season yesterday, a day later.
So, part of that is because the episodes are short and they’re only about a half hour long. (So the whole show is about 3.5 hours long.) But a bigger part is that it’s just a fantastic show. It traces a squire, Dunk, who may or may not have been knighted by his knight before the knight passed away. Dunk is desperate for money and so decides to enter a jousting tournament, if he can. If he wins even one match, he’ll have enough money to be financially stable. If he loses, he loses everything (horse and armor), but he has no other options.
The show is strong from start to finish. My only critique was that they threw in a scene here or there with no other real need for it other than Game of Thrones standard shock value. (Not talking about the actual fight scenes, which are brutal and definitely called for, but . . . do we really need to watch someone go to the bathroom? What does that bring to the table, creatively speaking? But then again, I think in the days of “you can pretty much see anything possible online by just tapping a few keys,” some of my arguments against that are a losing battle. But still.)
The character work and the acting are wonderful. And because they’re not rushing around trying to tell some world-altering story, the show has the space to just breathe and show character work that really shines. It takes its time, and that makes a big difference. I went in thinking we might have a Knight’s Tale style story, where we see him move up the ranks and win battle after battle as he makes a name for himself. In the end, it’s much more nuanced and complicated than that, but I won’t say any more, to avoid spoilers.
Bottom line: I wish I had another 10 shows just like it. 9.5/10.