We've survived the fight between the Mountain and the Viper, and (for now) the battle for control of the Wall, and this Sunday brings the grand finale to the fourth season of "Game Of Thrones." In the four years since the show began, a curious thing happened—it became a phenomenon.
The show was the biggest gamble the pay-cable monster had ever taken, a hugely expensive take on a genre that had generally been seen as niche and uncool, with too many dragons to attract the chattering classes that had turned "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" into must-see television, and potentially too much blood and gore to become the mainstream blockbusters that "The Lord of the Rings" films had been.
And yet thanks to an outstanding cast, high production values, and perhaps most importantly, a truly remarkable job of adapting George R.R. Martin's books by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the show picked up stellar reviews and proved to be a hit right out of the gate. But that was just the beginning. Viewing figures have skyrocketed with every season, and it's now not just HBO's biggest ever original series (recently overtaking "The Sopranos"), but one of the biggest dramas on TV, something that would have been unthinkable in the days of network TV dominance.
With this coming Sunday's season finale, we're probably approaching the halfway point of the show, and as such, it seemed like a good point to sit down and take a look back at the road to "Game Of Thrones." HBO had already established themselves as a brand name for quality TV, and so we've picked out ten of their shows that directly or indirectly proved to be forerunners to their biggest ever blockbuster.
"Oz" (6 Seasons, 1997-2003)
Though overshadowed by "The Sopranos" and "The Wire," "Oz," the network's first hour-long drama, is essentially patient zero for the pay-cable drama as we know it. Without it, shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Sons Of Anarchy" on rival networks, and yes, "Game Of Thrones," might not have existed at all. Created by Tom Fontana, best known for his work on "Homicide: Life On The Street," and who had a writing credit on every one of the show's episodes, it's set in the Oswald State Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in which an idealistic manager has set up a unit called Emerald City, a controlled, experimental place with glass walls intended to show that even the most dangerous prisoners can be rehabilitated. It's safe to say that the experiment doesn't work. More than fifteen years since it started to air, it remains something of a high watermark for brutality on television, with rape, racism, death-by-fire and worse all on the cards from the off, and things only getting more grotesque from there. The pioneer of the kind of expansive cast that would come down the line, with early roles from notable TV figures like Christopher Meloni, Harold Perrineau, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Dean Winters and Edie Falco, there is still a strange humanism to the show. No matter how monstrous the characters get (and they are particularly monstrous, given that a large number of them are Aryan Brotherhood members, and the most obviously sympathetic character is Lee Tergesen's Beecher, an alcoholic who drunkenly ran over a child), there's a kind of compassion towards all of them, with the twisted romance between Beecher and Meloni's bisexual serial killer being a curiously tender example. Given what's come since, it doesn't quite stand up as the finest example of the genre. The realistic docu-drama style borrowed from "Homicide" jars awkwardly with the absurd Grand Guignol melodrama of the plotting, and the semi-poetic narration by Perrineau's wheelchair-bound inmate often grates. But there's still an enormous amount of compelling drama to be found here, and if nothing else, the way it pioneered making sympathetic figures out of those who'd be villains elsewhere can be reflected all the way through to "Game Of Thrones."
"The Sopranos" (6 Seasons, 1999-2007)
Together with "Sex And The City," "The Sopranos" put HBO on the map as a home for original television as one of the most acclaimed and lauded shows in the history of the medium, and until a couple of weeks ago, the most popular series in the pay-cable network's history (the average audience for "Game Of Thrones" is now over 18.4 million people, beating the 18.2 million that 'Sopranos' got at its peak). "The Sopranos" came from modest beginnings though. It debuted from creator, David Chase, whose previous credits included the beloved "Northern Exposure," but whose sole previously created series, "Almost Grown," had lasted only ten episodes a decade earlier. It featured a cast, led by James Gandolfini and also included Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli and Lorraine Bracco, who would mostly only be familiar to those with an encyclopedic knowledge of character actors in crime movies. And it's central premise—of a mobster who goes into therapy—was shared by a big studio comedy, the Robert De Niro/Billy Crystal vehicle "Analyze This," that landed at almost exactly the same time, and threatened to overshadow it. Instead, it was the other way around, the plaudits for the series, and its eventual huge commercial success, stealing the admittedly successful film's thunder, and paving the way for the endless and idiotic "is TV better than the movies" debate that pops up every so often these days, and which "Game Of Thrones" adds further fuel to the fire of. Ironically, Chase comes down firmly on the side of the movies, admitting that he basically doesn't watch TV, and originally conceiving of "The Sopranos" as a film. We're grateful it was stretched out, though as the deceptively tight plotting melded with a character study of an often monstrous, always human anti-hero, creating the template that so many continue to emulate today. The show proved to be appointment viewing in the same way that "Game Of Thrones" still is today, and like "Oz," proved that a mass audience could deal with stomach-churning violence and creatively foul language without shying away. But perhaps more importantly, it was just terrific, with a caliber of writing and direction that could compete with not just anything else on the air, but anything in theaters too, and it's telling that some of the show's most prolific writers went on to continue the cable drama revolution, like "Boardwalk Empire" showrunner Terence Winter and "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner. And two of the show's most frequent directors, Timothy Van Patten and Alan Taylor, were crucial in establishing "Game Of Thrones" (Van Patten, who helmed twenty episodes of "The Sopranos," directed the second iteration of the "Game Of Thrones" pilot after HBO ordered significant reshoots on the original one, initially helmed by Thomas McCarthy).
"The Wire" (5 Seasons, 2002-2008)
Some might have assumed that "The Sopranos" would always remain HBO's most seminal achievement, but over time, "The Wire" might have just snuck past it. That wasn't the case when it was on, however. The show was always a critical favorite, but struggled in the ratings, often facing cancellation before getting a reprieve, and the cult only grew thanks to the coming of the DVD box set age, where audiences were able to digest it at their own pace. That's the perfect way to do it, really, because the show, a Dickensian epic from David Simon—a former journalist, and Tom Fontana's former colleague on "Homicide" (based on a book by the writer)—was the most obvious example of television as novel, with a frankly intimidating number of characters, sprawling plotting and a generally dense approach to storytelling. To begin with, it starts simply enough, centering around a wiretap investigation into the drug-dealing operation of crime boss Avon Barksdale, but the show's scope expanded more and more over time, taking in Baltimore's dock workers in the divisive second season, the political world in the third, the school system in the fourth, and the press in the fifth. The result wasn't so much a cop show as a portrait of a city, and of society at whole, with a fierce socio-economic viewpoint that extended from every character, from the kids dealing on the street corner to the highest levels of political power (all acted, as is usually the case with HBO, impeccably). It might seem a world away from Westeros, and certainly few could accuse "Game Of Thrones" of social realism. But its ever-expanding scope (reflected by those initially magical opening credits, which have grown every time a new location is featured on the series, and now seem to run about the same length as a network sitcom) and vast cast of characters are direct descendants of Simon's Baltimore tale. Would viewers be able to follow stories from The Wall to King's Landing, and remember all those faces, without having been trained on "The Wire" first? Probably, as the show regularly attracts audiences several times bigger than its predecessor ever attracted. But at the same time, it undoubtedly helped creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss think that they could crack the novels, and HBO to believe they could pull it off.
"Carnivale" (2 Seasons, 2003-2005)
Imagine the outrage that would have resulted from the hardcore if "Game Of Thrones" had never connected with a wider audience, and had been cancelled after two seasons. In fact, imagine if fans hadn't been able to find out what happened from the books, because there were no books. That's essentially the story of "Carnivale," at the time HBO's most ambitious series, and, when it launched, their biggest ever-debut for an original show. A passion project of creator Daniel Knauf, who'd been working on it for over a decade, it's a furiously dense, complex-to-the-point-of-inscrutability piece of work, like a David Lynch version of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" by way of John Steinbeck, following two-figures in Depression-era Dust Bowl America: Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), a young man with healing powers who joins a carnival, and Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a terrifying preacher with his own supernatural abilities, who are drawn on an inextricable path towards each other. The show was epic in scope and mythological in background, with the kind of detailed backstory that results when you develop a project for a decade, with Hawkins representing a creature of light, and Crowe one of darkness. It wasn't necessarily any more complex than the still-only-hinted at gods of ice and fire in "Game Of Thrones," but the show as a whole fell between two stools somewhat: too supernatural for the arty 'Wire' crowd, too lacking in immediate genre hooks and T&A for the geeks, and with a melancholy, difficult tone that asked you to do much of the work. Knauf intended each season to tell half of a "book," with three books and six seasons planned, but when ratings plummeted in the second season, and producers couldn't agree on lowering costs, the show was cancelled with many of its mysteries left unrevealed. Still, its cult has grown in the decade since it premiered, and the show's sheer weirdness, while not immediately repeated (although David Milch's "Deadwood" follow-up "John From Cincinnati" might be even more difficult), helped pave the way to "Game Of Thrones."
“Deadwood” (3 Seasons, 2004-2006)
A show whose premature cancellation we will NEVER stop mourning, maybe we need to get beyond the cruel way that the excoriatingly brilliant “Deadwood” was snatched from us, and concentrate instead on what a mini-miracle it was it ever got made at all. Firstly, show creator David Milch originally pitched HBO a show about gold and currency in ancient Rome, but since “Rome” was already in the cards at that point, he was asked if he could transpose his ideas about the formation of civilization from chaos to another historical milieu. Milch chose the American West (and can you imagine what kind of vernacular he would have evolved for Ancient Romans to spout?) and specifically the real-life town of Deadwood (based particularly on the book "Deadwood: the Golden Years") in which to have his epic, grandiose yet immensely grubby stories play out. Next, he attracted a ‘Thrones’-level ensemble of central unknown/rediscovered regulars, surrounded by reliably characterful supporting faces, chief among them, of course, Ian McShane as the indelible Al Swearengen. But the real star of the show was Milch’s dialogue—arch, baroque and anachronistically profane, no show before or since has ever sounded quite like “Deadwood,” and even the most literate and witty of ‘Thrones’ characters can’t hold a candle to the grotesquely brilliant zingers, curses and metaphors that made practically every line so chewy, so rich and so addicting. Otherwise, in terms of the elements it displayed that "Game of Thrones" would go on to use, it has maybe fewer of those than others on this list, but one way in which “Deadwood” could give it a run for its incestuous, head-splitting, torture and murder-loving money, is in the sheer depravity of some of its characters. From ambivalent bastard Swearengen, to ruthless gambling house owner Cy Tolliver, to Wu, the Chinaman who feeds human bodies to his pigs, there’s no perversion, corruption or dreadfulness that the show didn’t positively glory in, meaning you could trace a pretty straight line from that to Joffrey or Roose Bolton’s bastard, if you cared to. Mainly, though, “Deadwood” set a high watermark for just how far we’d be willing to follow a central character, no matter how compromised, if he was well-drawn and well-played enough, and it leaves us with just one overwhelming question: why in name of all that’s holy hasn’t Ian McShane had a guesting role on ‘Thrones’ as yet?
Rest at the Source