Game of Thrones at 10: how did a nerdy fantasy book series inspire a global phenomenon? The HBO series changed television forever – and even Donald Trump got in on the memes

Apr 17 , 2021

Kit Harrington and Emilia Clarke in hit HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones. Photo: NZME

HBO greenlit the prequel House of the Dragon while Amazon bought the rights to Lord of the Rings – but can the fantasy series’ success ever be replicated?

Some say sex and violence were the main draws of the TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s novels, but Shameless and True Blood boast more nude scenes

Winter came and went, leaving millions disappointed by the ending and a generation of adolescent boys exhausted from overstimulation.

Many more wondered whether all the blood and bare bottoms were strictly necessary.

But few would argue that HBO’s Game of Thrones, which celebrates its 10th birthday on April 17, was anything less than a pop culture phenomenon.

The cast and crew of Game of Thrones, winners of the award for outstanding drama series, pose in the press room at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2019 in Los Angeles. Photo: Invision/AP

Much to the chagrin of TV executives, figuring out how to repeat its global success remains as much a mystery as how anyone ever built a 700-foot (213-metre) wall entirely out of ice.

What made the show so interesting were the twin poles of power politics and family

Carolyne Larrington, author of All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones

Some of the winning components are clear – not least HBO’s penchant for naked, usually female, bodies. But the non-stop sex brought controversy too, especially when it was less consensual than in the original books, starting with the brutal consummation of Daenerys’ marriage to Khal Drogo in the first episode in 2011.

“I think they misjudged the audience at the very beginning. There was something quasi-pornographic going on there,” said Carolyne Larrington, a medieval literature professor at the University of Oxford and author of All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones.

Kit Harington as Jon Snow and Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in season eight of Game of Thrones. Photo: HBO

But overall, according to the experts at MrSkin.com, the show sits a lowly seventh in the all-time TV nudity rankings, with 82 nude scenes (74 per cent female). That’s far below Shameless and True Blood with 236 and 137 nude scenes, respectively.

Gore was another attraction, with a catalogue of skin-flaying, eye-gouging, throat-slitting, horse-heart-eating carnage that famously refused to spare even the show’s main characters.