I am not usually into this kind of stuff but people kept telling me how great it was so that I finally decided to watch the whole series. I have watched the first ten episodes so far and I must say I like it, although it's a little bit on the heroic fantasy side which is not usually something I like. I thought it was much more medieval realism than fantasy... In the first episode, it was a bit ambiguous. I mean the demons and all that could just have been in the guy's head, up until the moment when he lost it that is... I was a bit amused by the cauldron filled with melted gold... I mean the melting point of gold is quite high... This looked more like it was gold-painted lead. But when it took a sharp turn toward heroic fantasy was the tenth episode where the girl was able to enter the fire and survive!! Plus the little CGI minute dragons on her shoulder, belly etc... So that means these REALLy were dragon's eggs then... I like the realism a great deal more than the dragon and stuff thing... I hope we won't get much of the latter... Now to watch season two...
A word of advice: If you watch the Behind-the-scenes stuff with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, don't believe any of the positive things they say about Daenerys Targaryen''s character because it's all a bunch of lies. Also, if you don't like Fantasy, you'll struggle to like the rest of the series.
One thing that I find intriguing though, is that we see a lot of naked tits, asses and even subliminal glimpses of pudenda, even people making very convincing impressions of copulation. I thought this kind of stuff was forbidden on UK/US tv... Not that I am complaining. I am just surprised.
It's an HBO show. You have to pay to have it so they're except from almost all the rules. If you think this show is titillating try Spartacus next ;-)
The books are better...usually. But the tv show definitely has its moments, though I feel it fumbles the ball a bit in the next-to-last season, and I've heard (but haven't seen) that it drops the ball entirely in the last season. I wouldn't mind being wrong about that. There's a whole lot to enjoy in the series otherwise, though. However, if you're more interested in medieval realism than medieval fantasy, this may not quite be your cup of tea. Though I'd say it's about 75% realism to 25% fantasy usually.... Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts!
The show is certainly not heroic for most of its run. After Ned Stark is gone the show loses it’s traditional moralist center and the protagonists become much more ethically ambiguous. At least until close to the end.
There's "The White Queen" if you prefer realism to fantasy in your medieval TV romp. GRRM based GoT/ASoIaF to some extent on the Wars of the Roses with a sprinkling of other real historical events. No tits and ass, though, as far as I recall.
I hear they stopped the series because they ran out of recurrent characters to kill off. I've watched four more episodes so far... I think I'll make an overall comment after I am finished. So far I am intrigued and are waiting for irrelevant parts of the story to become relevant. I'll take a look at "Spartacus" and "The White Queen" after I am finished.
FWIW, I really doubt that that's why they stopped the series. I haven't seen the final season, but my sense is that it ran roughly as long as it should have (think TNG or DS9), but that they made some dubious choices in the last two seasons, as though they became impatient and decided to just end it...but not because they'd run out of characters to kill off.
I don't know where you got this idea from, but there's zero truth to it. David Benioff and Dan Weiss decided that they only needed 70+ episodes to tell the GoT/ASoIaF story pretty much from the day they first approached GRRM about the possibility of licensing an adaptation from him.