Game Of Thrones (Season Five)

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

Alternative titles for this season (not sanctioned by anyone other than me) include Game Of Thrones: The Cersei Years or, of course, Shit Gets Real.  While the nudity and adult content is less gratuitous than it has sometimes erred to be, this series is the murderiest, violentest, religionest, graphicest and twistedest set of episodes yet.  As with each passing year of its by-now snowballing popularity, 2015’s trips to Westeros are lavished in increasing budgets which, rather than detracting from the sociological richness and deep characterisation, enhance the two former elements by bringing them further to life with rich and extensive imagery.  For fans of the show, this season has it all.  And for fans who know that, like winter, season eight is coming, it’s important to feast on this real peak of Thrones before everyone runs out of puff.

While the action of its predecessors saw characters take a lot longer to get around Westeros alone, season five is the start of much more rapid and extensive movement.  Arya goes to Braavos and Tyrion and Varys go to Pentos and finally reach Meereen, while Jaime journeys to Dorne (with Bronn), Sansa ends up at Winterfell, preceding Stannis’s own arrival there, and Jon Snow drags half the Night’s Watch to Hardhome.  Let’s focus on Arya for a bit, as a chance encounter with a coin in season two seems to result in her undertaking the worst work experience ever.  Determined to track down Jaqen H’gar, she petitions the House Of Black And White to let her join their organisation, wilfully sweeping its floors after purging (nearly) all of her material possessions.  And what a place.  I still can’t really work it out.  It seems to function as a sort of multi-faith prayer room (like the ones you see signs for at airports) but with a pool of poisonous water you can be given to drink if you want your dead body washed in an adjacent room, before, I think, your face is hung up in a big underground cavern for use in future assassinations.  Praying and killing: together at last.  Progressing through the training, Arya ends up in an even worse role, if that’s possible, carting unrefrigerated shellfish around a hot port city, before murdering the wrong person.  But, in fact, Meryn Trant is completely the right person, allowing Arya finally to get some more names off her kill list.  The graphic gore of Trant’s death by stabbing feels like just desserts not just for his awfulness since season one, but also his unsettling sexual preferences: beating small girls.  Arya clearly shows she’s one small girl who won’t be beaten.

But it’s our big girl who comes a cropper.  Not Brienne Of Tarth, though (whom we all love and whom the producers of the show seem to love seeing get punched in the face or stomach, mostly in season four), but Queen Cersei.  Sensing her hold of Tommen at risk due to Margaery’s skilled manipulation of her intended, Cersei forms a dangerous pact with the newly emerged High Sparrow.  But he proves to be one old man who simply won’t play her game (of thrones).  While her delicious scheming sees both Margaery and Loras locked away, the tables turn when Cersei herself is held to account for her affair with Lancel Lannister (now unrecognisible).  Enter Septa Unella (who crops up as a parent in Sex Education), showing you don’t need many lines to make a big impact.  Never is this more clearly demonstrated than in the season’s finale, Mother’s Mercy, when Cersei is finally allowed out on remand, provided she walks all the way home naked.  The scenes of her journey make uncomfortable and almost endless viewing, but Unella is there the whole way, ringing her bell, dodging the peltings of detritus, and periodically shouting “Shame.  Shame.”  In fact, this approach is a great process to adopt in the workplace for anyone who needs feedback on their performance.  No office should be without a bell and a shame parade when somebody does something wrong.

Meanwhile, over in Dorne, we have the first introduction of featured characters that I can’t help but find slightly pointless.  With Oberyn’s head smashed in, his paramour Ellaria Sand is set on revenge, despite Prince Doran’s counsel of restraint.  Three of her fightingest daughters support her claim, but their arrival all at once leaves insufficient time to establish any individuality, leaving a banal taste as their motives to act or shove their bare breasts through prison bars descend into an element of interchangeable caricature rarely seen in Westeros.  I could really do without them.

Luckily, at the other end of the scale, there is Jon Snow (at least until he is stabbed to death in the final episode).  Carefully navigating the lawlessness of Caste Black until a new Lord Commander is chosen, it’s our Jon himself who finds himself at the head of the Night’s Watch, thanks to long-time good egg Maester Aemon.  He must then cope with Stannis’s expectations of support for his kingship, and with Melisandre’s insistence he clutch her bare breasts, all while slowly realising that every Wildling he saves from the White Walkers is one that can fight against the dead in the coming battle.  How all the Wildlings got to Hardhome isn’t covered, but Jon must head there with Tormund (whose comedy we haven’t yet fully discovered) on Stannis’s spare ships to bring them home.  There then unravels, in this eighth episode, what is perhaps my favourite sequence in the whole of Game Of Thrones.  Finally, we’re combining dragon-featuring fantasy with an all-out zombie apocalypse.  The tension is high throughout, from the Wildlings’ initial suspicion of the crows, to the slowly-dawning realisation that the Night King has turned up with his army to scout for new recruits.  The sheer panic as the Wildlings run for the walls of Hardhome is chilling, while the sudden silence that follows still haunts me.  As the skeletons invade, a battle unfolds, with Jon, Dolorous Edd, Tormund and the last giant eventually paddling to safety.  But the Night King isn’t bothered.  Just look at the complacence of his expression as he reanimates the battle’s victims on the waterfront just by raising his hands and sort of shrugging nonchalantly while eyeballing Jon.  I’ve watched the episode countless times, and I still find myself struggling to breathe throughout.  In addition, my muscles tense up in angst.  You could remove the sofa from under me and I wouldn’t change position. 

Best newcomer

It’s slim pickings here, so I’m going to go for The Waif, Arya’s workplace rival in Braavos.  She’s basically a dick to Arya the whole time, so she’s only here as my aversion to her is so strong that we have to recognise her effect on the viewer.

Most valuable character

Samwell Tarly is our hero this time around, even though his most heroic turns were in season three.  It’s he who stages an impromptu nomination of Jon Snow in the race for Lord Commander, proving he’s the ultimate wingman in both backing his best pal and trolling the awful Ser Alliser Thorne.

Best death

We need to make more of a fuss about Miranda, Ramsay’s plaything and daughter of the kennel master at Winterfell.  She’s an absolute piece of work, gleefully joining in with Theon’s torture and accompanying her bastard beau when he runs down girls in the forests.  When she intercepts prisoner-wife Sansa on the battlements of Winterfell, an arrow notched, she conducts herself deliciously like the cat who’s got the cream.  But, at last, Theon does the right thing and tosses her over the edge.  Her body hits the ground unceremoniously and we yell at the telly for Sansa and Theon to escape the clutches of the bastard of Winterfell.  Such fun.

Jaw-dropper moment

The Sons Of The Harpy have to be one of the campest terrorist organisations ever seen.  Not content with shiny gold masks and colourful tunics, they move in this oily, sinister way like their going to jazz-hand you to death.  Sure, they’re successful in killing off dear old Ser Barristan and wounding Grey Worm, but their big uprising in The Dance Of Dragons sees a lot of them burned to crisps by Drogon.  But from the moment Jorah Mormont’s spear gets one square in the chest, via the stabbing of Hizdahr zo Loraq (nobody minds), to the sight of Missandei and Daenerys holding hands in fear as they’re convinced they’ve met their end in the middle of the fighting pit, this sequence rivals the Hardhome evacuation for sheer maintained tension and insurmountable peril.