‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Review: Can ‘Game of Thrones’ Be Good?

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “Motif” sounds too sophisticated for the pattern that emerges across the early episodes of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” HBO ‘s third and latest “Game of Thrones” series . First, a knight’s urgent secretion plops to the ground behind a tree that offers far too little. Then a swordsman’s god-given saber lets loose the dogs of wee. Finally, a horse ignores his master’s orders - or perhaps misinterprets them as, “Poop! Now! And make it a big one!” Yet for as crass as these designed defecations can be, they’re not without grander purpose. Based on George R.R. Martin’s fan-favorite novellas, “ A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms ” aims to expand the “ Game of Thrones ” franchise by tweaking its tone. Where the original series and its spinoff ( “House of the Dragon” ) are callous and their characters largely craven, Martin and co-creator Ira Parker’s six-episode season is compassionate and its lead, Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall (Peter Claffey), a class act. His initial adventure focuses more on making friends than fighting battles, and the only dragon to be seen is a finely designed puppet. While “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” stands on its own quite well - as someone averse to the original’s misanthropic worldview, even before that disastrous final season , a lighter perspective is just what the maester ordered - what connects the tales of Dunk to the vaster “Thrones” franchise may be hard to spot at first. Sure, the universe is recognizable, what with the nonsensical names, medieval accoutrements, and Ramin Djawadi’s rousing score (sparingly used, thankfully), but the established scale is markedly, smartly, miniaturized. Rather than a sprawling cast of competitors for the Iron Throne, there’s just a knight (Dunk) and his squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), who don’t really know what to do or where to go. Instead of kings and queens cunningly maneuvering their armies against their enemies, there’s only an ox of a man and a bald little boy, neither of whom exhibits a clearly superior intellect. “GoT’s” hourlong episodes are cut in half, its pessimistic plotting is reversed, and the big, make-or-break, season-defining battles are pruned to a single jousting tournament orchestrated by a party bro with an antler crown (Daniel Ings, a treasure). Deliberately dumping so many franchise staples is a creative choice for which Parker, Martin, and HBO in general should be commended, as well as building a season around mourning the dead by nurturing the living. (Season 1’s perspicuity can’t be overstated.) But, returning to my original point, its potty pattern suggests deeper parallels between this new nice show and its old naughty predecessors - a motif, if you will, that may well be enough to keep...

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