HBO ‘Game of Thrones’ Spinoff

The first dragon appears roughly halfway through the pilot for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO’s latest Game of Thrones spinoff.

The dragon is fierce, fire-breathing and deadly. 

It’s also a puppet, albeit a very elaborate one, entertaining a tent full of stragglers and hangers-on at a star-studded tournament of knights. 

Following in the footsteps of House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff whose flawed creative ethos appears to have been “Everything you like about the original only MORE,” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is defined, then, by less. A map illustrating the series’ locations would show only one. The list of storied houses participating in the tournament would include many Targaryens and one or two Baratheons, but hardly the full rogue’s gallery of nobility fans have come to expect. And that dragon? It probably cost less than the Starbucks budget on the first series. 

The result is something I’d begun to doubt was even possible: a smaller, smarter, funnier and more charming glimpse into George R.R. Martin‘s bigger-is-better realm. It isn’t so much a Game of Thrones series for people who hated Game of Thrones, but it’s a Game of Thrones series for anybody who has ever wondered what, say, a Richard Linklater version of Game of Thrones would be. It’s a loose hangout comedy, with a tightly contained six-episode narrative arc and episodes generally running under 40 minutes. True to its source material, it’s the TV equivalent of a novella instead of an epic tome. 

Despite some flaws, I very much approve of this deviation from the formula. 

Adapted by Martin and Ira Parker, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is fundamentally a two-hander. Peter Claffey plays Duncan, the squire to a virtuous but disreputable hedge knight (Danny Webb’s Ser Arlan). As we begin, Duncan is in the process of burying Ser Arlan, the only father he’s ever known, leaving him with three horses, a beat-up shield, a broadsword, and what might be a lie. The lie is that before he passed, Ser Arlan knighted “Dunk,” as he’s called.

Dunk lacks purpose until he hears about a tournament, which offers him the opportunity for wealth — but more importantly, for visibility and legitimacy rarely accorded to a man of his social stature. (His upbringing was low, but his physical size borders on gigantic.)

At a near-empty inn a day’s ride from the tournament, Dunk meets a boy whom he takes for a servant. Identifying himself as “Egg” (Dexter Sol Ansell), the unusually bald boy requests the honor of serving as Dunk’s squire. As Egg puts it simply, “Every knight needs a squire. You look like you need one more than most.”

Off they go to the tournament, which has the distinction of being overseen by Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), heir to the Iron Throne and brother to stern Prince Maekar (Sam Spruell), who’s stressed because two of his sons have gone missing en route. 

Beyond the royals, the tournament is populated by an assortment of higher-profile knights, including Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings), a boisterous drunk who welcomes Dunk into his revels, and the myriad pieces of the tournament side economy — particularly servants, sex workers and Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), the Dornish puppeteer whose dragon produces amazement and eventually trouble.

As the tournament approaches, stakes escalate beyond mere jousting, and the show goes from resembling Game of Thrones in only circumstantial ways to reminding us of the brutality in the Westeros legal system. This raises the body count, but did little for my own appreciation, which was highest when Dunk and Egg are on the road resembling nothing so much as The Meanderings of Ser Jack Reacher & Aang From The Last Airbender, cracking wise about the lyrics of drinking songs and the high aspirations of knighthood. Once the twists start coming and people start dying, the amiability diminishes.

The humor diminishes as well, which could cause awards categorization problems for HBO. Tonally, the first half of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms isn’t just a comedy — it’s a broad comedy that pokes iconoclastic fun at the franchise. The first time Ramin Djawadi’s theme is heard, it’s followed by a character projectile pooping against a tree. One character’s tribute to another character’s quiet humility is accompanied by the introduction to the latter’s elephantine prosthetic penis. That the second half of the season becomes darker and bloodier makes it more of a drama, though if our comedic standard is still “Is it funnier than The Bear?” the answer is, “Yes, yes it is.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms isn’t a big show in comparative terms, but directors Owen Harris and Sarah Adina Smith keep it from ever feeling claustrophobic. The combat scenes are appropriately graphic and severe — this is still not, in case you haven’t caught on, a show for kids — and the use of verdant locations in Northern Ireland is a reminder that careful camera placement on a diagonal hill can be every bit as visually dynamic as a CG lizard deploying its CG wings against a green screen. 

Yet the best moments involve small talk. Parker and a writing staff including the late Aziza Barnes take advantage of the show’s focus on low-born characters to flesh out blue-collar life in the Seven Kingdoms. The franchise has had quippier lines, but few more pointed than an innkeeper’s mockery of the realm’s bread and circuses: “Knights are built the same as other men and I never knew a joust to change the price of eggs.”

If there’s a downside to the series’ briskness, it’s felt in the limitations to the ensemble, especially the female characters; Crawford is the only actress with even a half-developed role. Scruffy men abound, generally entertainingly, as Ings makes the boozy Ser Lyonel into an instant jolt of playful adrenaline, a perfect contrast to Carvel and Spruell’s unpredictably imperious Targaryens. 

The show’s primary appeal comes down to Claffey and Ansell, the former a rugby stalwart less than a decade into acting and the latter barely a decade into existing. They are in all ways a perfect comic duo, one slow-talking and a looming presence, the other energetic and diminutive, attuned to each other naturally and likably. 

Putting this offshoot on the shoulders of two inexperienced stars could have been a disaster. Instead it’s the Claffey/Ansell rapport, and not anything in the ongoing plot, that already has me eager for further — a second season was already ordered — tales of Dunk and Egg.