Game of Thrones 14-minute Sneak Peek (HBO) *spoilers!*

I saw both this and a "making of" special. This series is gonna kick ASS!

 

I am saving myself for the full airing. This has the possibility of being truly great.

 

Omg I think I just came.

 

That was pretty good, but not really great. I hope the series is better than the books. Speaking of which, I don't think they are finished yet. It will be interesting to see if this gets Martin working on some sort of conclusion.

 

Book 5 is out this summer, actually. Its available for pre-order now. If I remember correctly, its going to be 7 books all in all.

 

The fact that its on HBO bodes very, very well. All of their shows are outstanding.

 

If I'm not mistaken, and I don't follow this series of books all that closely, wasn't it like several years since the last book? book 4? Given that, how many years will it take to finish the last 2? I guess I'm wondering if this series will light a fire under Martin's butt to get some sort of conculsion. I think his fans, at least, would appreciate that.

I agree, given the few I have seen.

 

It looked very good but I can't get the channel showing it here. Oh well.

 

Actually, I bet it will get canceled after awhile. Bible-thumpers complaining about swearing and nudity etc. It happened to Deadwood and Rome.

 

I disagree, the good shows last as long as they want to (Sopronos, The Wire, Oz, etc.) Also, the protests don't seem to work as well with networks that charge a premium to watch. There aren't any advertisers to bully.

 

@Rawgrim, are you sure Rome wasn't cancelled because it was booooring?

 

The Sopranos is an HBO production? I didn't know that. While I don't get HBO, [I think we get Showtime instead, but I don't really watch it], I saw a couple of those on some other station, at least portions of them. I had heard all the media propaganda about The Sopranos, but seeing it, I thought is was not very good. The impression I got was that it was like a Mafia soap opera, something that had to followed show to show, but not very engaging as stand-alones.

I've never heard of The Wire, or Oz, but I liked the John Adams series [I have the DVD set].

 

Deadwood and Rome got canceled because their audiences dried up and they were crazy-expensive to produce, not because anyone complained about their content. True Blood has more boobs, butts, blood, guts, foul language and even blatant evangelical Christian-bashing than both of those shows combined, and it's the most popular show HBO has ever had.

@ Chandos,

The Wire was one of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last decade. Highly recommended. Oz was pretty good, too, though it was older and not as well-produced.

I'm watching Season 3 of In Treatment right now and it's outstanding (if you find psychology interesting, anyway).

 

Wash your mouthout with soap, Rome was quality. It didn't get another series because it was bloody expensive to produce and I think doing on the cheap just to wring out a few more series would have ruined it. I love Rome; much better than Spartacus (the TV series).

 

DR - Maybe I should switch my serivce from Showtime, since it seems HBO has all the good stuff.

 

Well, Showtime has great shows, too. Dexter is one of my favorite shows, as is WEEDS. But United States of Tara kind of bores me, I can't get into Californication, Nurse Jackie holds no interest, and it looks like The Big C was canceled.

But - totally my opinion, of course - HBO doesn't really make a bad series show. Boardwalk Empire would totally ruin your sh*t, it's so good. True Blood is great, though I see why it doesn't appeal to everyone. In Treatment, as I said, great. The Pacific was a recent miniseries that was kind of a Band of Brothers sequel, in a way. Plus great documentaries, I could go on. They also tend to get the better movies. I think in the long run, you'll prefer it.

Having said all that - Stars isn't too shabby either. I loved Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and just saw the first two episodes of their new series Camelot (Arthurian, not Kennedy), which so far looks really good. But I also have a Netflix account, and Starz is part owner of Netflix, so just about anything they air on Starz I can stream for free. Ditto for past seasons of just about all Showtime shows. Nothing HBO makes can be streamed on Netflix (though you can get the DVDs in the mail). In short, I have HBO and Skinemax and I'm perfectly happy. May even dump Skinemax, since they mainly show movies HBO already had on 6 months prior. The only original programming they have are late-night bimbo smut, which is less and less appealing to me the further away from 13 years old I get.

 

I get Stars - I should check it out! I just don't watch that much TV, but I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on the internet. But I suppose that is still TV.

 

Me neither, that's the thing. My wife and I don't really watch regular TV anymore. There's a few comedies we like, but we DVR EVERYTHING. She works late and we like to watch DVR'd shows when we have our late suppers. We have something different to watch every night this way, and it's never a dumb reality show or most of the crap on TV these days. There are a few exceptions - Justified on FX is awesome, for example. But despite my endorsement of HBO's awesomeness, we really don't watch that much. The little we do watch, though, is the highest quality and really enjoyable.