A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms review: Chivalry is not dead in refreshing Game of Thrones spin-off

When Game of Thrones closed out in 2019, the series had dominated pop culture fandoms, ratings and internet discourse for a decade.

Exploiting the intellectual property was a no-brainer, except it proved surprisingly difficult for a Game of Thrones spin-off to take off. It’s as if the commissioning process was as fraught as the battle for the Iron Throne.

Many tried, many failed.

There was Blood Moon, which made it as far as an expensive pilot starring Naomi Watts and Jamie Campbell Bower, as well as shelved efforts including shows about Robert’s Rebellion, Flea Bottom, Princess Nymeria and a Jon Snow sequel.

In the past six years, only two shows have run through the gauntlet and emerged victorious, making it to broadcast and streaming.

One was House of the Dragon, which was delightfully nicknamed HoTD, and the second is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premieres on Monday.

Co-created by George R.R. Martin and adapted from his three novellas collected as Tales of Dunk and Egg, it is a much smaller, contained series than HoTD.

For one thing, it’s only six episodes, each mostly around the 30 to 35 minutes mark. There are also no CGI dragons or fantastical creatures to distract you, and complicated family trees are kept to a minimum, even with the presence of the incestuous Targaryen family.

By its final seasons, Game of Thrones had expanded into an unwieldy universe with too many characters, complex subplots and competing narrative agendas, while the underwhelming HoTD has never enjoyed the fan devotion of its predecessor (it was getting really hard to tell all those blond characters apart).

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a refreshing reset, leaning into the traditions of chivalric tales, as if these characters had walked out of King Arthur’s world.

The lead character is Dunk (Peter Claffey), a man of great physical stature that would very much go on to own his other moniker of Ser Duncan the Tall. As an orphan child, he was taken on as a squire to Ser Arlan of Pennytree, a hedge (wandering) knight who, as the series starts, has just died.

He served Ser Arlan who was a drunk who wasn’t above clipping Dunk on the head, but he seemed to have been a principled man. Dunk too wants to be a good knight, but is left somewhat adrift with Ser Arlan’s sword, three horses and not a lot of training.

He chances upon a young child who calls himself Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), who becomes his squire. But the very enthusiastic and sweet-natured Egg seems to know more than he should, and is harbouring a secret about his identity.

Most of the season takes place at Ashford Meadow, a knightly tournament where there’s much feasting, jousting and shows.

It’s an opportunity for Dunk to prove himself, and maybe land a spot with one of the great houses of Westeros.

There he meets the likes of a Baratheon and a Tyrell, and some Targaryens, who at this point in the story, about a century before Game of Thrones, are the ruling family of the Seven Kingdoms.

Not all knights and nobles are as chivalric as Dunk had expected, and it’s a learning curve when he discovers that some, including the cruel Prince Aerion (Finn Bennett) are actually bad people.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms works because the somewhat obtuse Dunk is genuinely a kind-hearted person who strives to be good, and realises he will have to decide for himself what that constitutes.

It’s kind of like watching someone with a case of imposter syndrome trying to find his place in a world he didn’t understand that he didn’t understand. That character-based storytelling makes this show far more compelling than the plot-driven HoTD.

It also has a sense of gentle humour about itself – for example, in the opening scenes, the stirring strains of the familiar Game of Thrones theme song is undercut by Dunk literally taking a sh-t against the backdrop of beautiful countryside, complete with projectiling faeces. It makes you giggle.

There are no consequential female characters (Australian actor Tanzyn Crawford has a thankless, nothing role as a puppeteer) and it has some pacing issues. It commits that sin so common these days of cutting to a long flashback sequence in the penultimate episode, just as the action is about to get heavy.

It also takes the better part of its first four episodes to really kick into gear, at which point, you’re acutely aware that there is only one hour left in the show, but it does make you hungry for a second season, which few said about HoTD.

For audiences who have residual good will towards Game of Thrones but don’t want the burden of fully committing to and being burned by another massive and convoluted fantasy epic that demands too much, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is just the right vibe.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres on HBO Max on Monday, January 19