The new Game of Thrones prequel is ‘very funny’ and a ‘total delight’

The latest spin-off from the fantasy hit tells the story of an inexperienced knight and his cheeky squire. With its mix of brutal drama and plentiful humour, it’s a “nailed-on winner”.

Game of Thrones? Brilliant, until some of the later episodes. House of the Dragon? Good, without ever reaching the heights of its predecessor. Broadly speaking, that’s how fans feel about the first two shows set in Westeros, the high-fantasy creation of novelist George RR Martin. Now here comes the eagerly awaited third, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. How does it compare? It’s a total delight from start to finish. We haven’t had this much fun in Westeros for a long time – maybe ever.

The titular knight is Ser Duncan. Cast your mind back to the first episode of the fourth season of Thrones. There’s a brief scene in which the loathsome Joffrey is flicking through the Book of Brothers, the huge tome recording the great deeds of all of the Kingsguards, a cadre of elite royal bodyguards. “Ser Duncan the Tall,” Joffrey says, coming across an unusually long entry. “Four pages for Ser Duncan. He must have been quite a man.”

Quite a man indeed, but he’s a long way from being a Kingsguard in this, his origin story. We’re roughly in the middle of the two centuries separating Dragon and Thrones. Episode one opens with Ser Duncan (Peter Claffey), also known as Dunk, burying Ser Arlan, the old hedge knight for whom he had squired. A “hedge knight” is a knight not pledged to one of the great houses; a free lance (the term originally referred to medieval soldiers for hire). Ser Arlan had few possessions and no coin (although he was… ahem… well-endowed in other ways, as a brief biographical montage shows), but he cleaved to the ideals of chivalry and instilled in Ser Duncan the desire to be a good knight.

Ser Duncan is poorly trained, lacks experience and is dressed in little better than rags, with a rope for a swordbelt, but he hopes that if he makes a name for himself at an upcoming tournament in Ashford Meadow, one of the great houses might take him into its service.

On his way to the “tourney”, he reluctantly accepts the squiring services of a bald-headed boy called Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) who has started following him. Egg, as tiny as Dunk is huge, wants to be a knight and is a bit of a cheeky know-it-all – generally far sharper than Dunk “the lunk”, who is no intellectual.

The story, based on the first of three Martin novellas featuring the pair, is about what transpires at the tournament. In press notes provided by HBO, showrunner Ira Parker compares Ashford to Glastonbury or Burning Man, and the events that unfold there have geopolitical ramifications that ripple down through the decades and are still being felt when Thrones begins. However, it is Dunk and Egg’s odd-couple relationship, occasionally mildly antagonistic but mostly affectionate, that is the beating heart of this excellent six-episode show.

Both the old gods and the new were smiling over the production when Claffey and Ansell were cast. They are brilliant individually and the chemistry between them is extraordinary. You’d think they’d been working together in a Laurel and Hardy-style double act for decades, yet Claffey – a hulking former rugby player – has only been acting for a couple of years and this is his first lead part.  His 11-year-old co-star has been acting since he was four and has already had a number of significant roles. Ansell reveals in the press notes that George R.R. Martin told him: “You are perfect. You are Egg.”

Our two heroes meet a host of memorable characters. They include Tanselle “Too Tall” (Tanzyn Crawford), a winsome puppeteer who catches the eye of Dunk; the roisterous Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings), known as the “Laughing Storm”; and the fair-minded Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen (Bertie Carvel).

Those surnames will be familiar to fans of Martin’s work, but there are a number of important differences between this series and its sister shows. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has no elaborate title sequence or rousing orchestral score and very little CGI. Whereas Thrones and Dragon have multiple plotlines running concurrently across numerous locations, with this we get only a single narrative thread, told from Ser Duncan’s point of view. The focus is on the lives of the “smallfolk” – commoners – rather than the nobility. The episodes are pacy and short – with an average length of just under 35 minutes.

And it’s very funny. There’s humour in the other shows, but this is of a different order altogether: done with a lightness of touch and positively oozing charm. There is physical comedy, dry humour and almost Monty Pythonesque absurdity – for the latter, witness the solemn discussion between Dunk and Egg about the real meaning of an absolutely filthy barroom ballad belted out by Ser Lyonel.

But there’s also the heart-in-mouth drama and eye-watering violence for which Westeros is known. A brutal trial-by-combat sequence left me feeling bruised. The jousting scenes are thrilling and visceral and will have viewers checking for the “No animals were harmed” note at the end of the credits.

Interestingly, the series has returned to the old Thrones studio in Belfast and uses some of the same crew and some of the same Northern Ireland locations. It does feel more like the original show than House of the Dragon, which is shot in England.

Most who watch will have some knowledge of Westeros, but one could fall in love with this show without knowing a single thing about the Game of Thrones universe. You might think twice about backing the young Ser Duncan in a tourney, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a nailed-on winner and HBO knows it. Season 2 is being filmed already.