The Game of Thrones franchise has fruited again, like an abundant oak. Where’s left to go? A startling opening, in which a lumbering oaf takes a dump behind a tree, gives us a clue. Chronologically, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Monday 19 January, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) sits between the juggernaut original and its courtly prequel, House of the Dragon. Tonally, it’s in a world of its own.
That oaf eventually gets a name: Dunk. Contrary to expectation, Dunk is a knight. Specifically, a “hedge knight”, a lower-status category whose kind cannot afford their keep and must sleep under trees. “Any knight can make a knight” we are reminded, by simply dubbing them. This lack of gatekeeping has resulted in a class system in which highborn valiants scorn their ignoble brethren. They are knights in name only, and only just. Of course, there’s nothing just about this.
My jaw was agape for much of the first episode, as I wondered what game HBO were playing. It takes place largely on a featureless moor, following Dunk in his meaningless solitude, apart from three horses whom he speaks to as equals. He is demonstrably dim-witted, penniless and naive. He misses his father figure – a recently deceased, geriatric, alcoholic knight who beat him. There’s a Beckettian bleakness to this vision. Like much of Beckett, it’s also a comedy.
This is, on the surface, a simple tale. Dunk makes a journey to a “tourney” – a jousting competition where he hopes to prove himself. We follow his attempts to get on the ballot, given his nondescript lineage. He falls for a girl, takes part in a tug-of-war. He is hampered as much as assisted by his new squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) – a bald, pubescent boy who latches on to him at an inn.
With six short episodes, the creators aren’t pumping hot air into George RR Martin’s source novella. (They avoid the mistake of the prequel Hobbit films, which stretched their story, and audience patience, into what felt like 200 hours of numbing dragon-tease.) Since we’re talking size, we need to talk about Dunk. This fella looks like Paul Mescal had a baby with Reacher. I had to buy a bigger TV to fit him on the screen. He’s played, with great heart, by Peter Claffey, a former rugby union player from Galway. Paired with the fragile figure of Egg, you have the equation for a classic comedy double act.
There’s a joy to being wrongfooted, especially in a high-stakes project. I was reminded of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi (though it’s more closely akin to the Heath Ledger film A Knight’s Tale). The creators wilfully subvert expectations of grandeur or heroism. Scenes are punctuated by our hero Dunk being called big or thick or out of place, by his superiors, children and random minor characters. He walks into a door frame at one point, twice. Asserting himself by bossing Egg around, he is verbally outmatched. “Don’t run away or I’ll hunt you down with dogs,” he commands. “Where will you get the dogs?” comes the faux-innocent reply.
But like its main characters, this is a tale full of surprises. I barked with laughter, before a series of revelations upended the tone again. The series reveals the deeper game it has been playing, judging deftly when to show its hand. Details would spoil the journey but, as you’d expect, Claffey has his Ugly Betty moment. He grows into a towering moral compass.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms may not be a sprawling, dynastic myth but it is concerned with family and inheritance. Of course Westeros fans, like Omaze players, get excited by great houses. They’ll be thrilled by Daniel Ings, chewing scenery as Lyonel Baratheon. The Targaryens, too, slither into town in crisis, having misplaced a few sons on their way to Ashford – presumably not the ex-Eurostar station in Kent.
This is Game of Thrones at its best. A rich, politically complex meal, with sides of bone-snapping violence. Its boldness has stayed with me, as what started in coarse slapstick becomes a moving exploration of true nobility, survivor’s guilt and goodness. The oaf has moral fibre in his diet. No wonder he needed that dump.
