Game of Thrones by HBO

[Yahshua]

Game of Thrones is an Television adaptation of the A Game of Thrones is the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin. However when I first watched the series from the first episode I don't get the feeling like the most viewer who loved this series. The first thing is that the characters in the series has no redemptive quality to themselves and lots of frontal nudity. And over use of sex make the series painful to watch. Overall I prefer something like The Lords of Rings Or CS Lewis series than this.

[ShiroiHikari]

I want to see this series because my husband is a big fan of the books. Most HBO series have...mature content though. That's just how they do things, apparently.

[Atria35]

Yeah. From what I've read (so far) of the books, the books are great. Fabulous stuff. They do have mature content, though, but I imagine that HBO being HBO they add to it.

[rocklobster]

Having read all four of the current books, I really can't see how you could do a movie about them without it. Alas, I don't want to pay extra for HBO, so I shall await the inevitable DVD release (hey, Sopranos is on DVD, so I wouldn't be surprised if this made it to DVD)

[TheMewster]

Never read the books but that's HBO for ya'. Getting Stuff Past The Radar. Thankfully I don't watch those shows .

[MomentOfInertia]

Never read the books but that's HBO for ya'. Getting Stuff Past The Radar. Thankfully I don't watch those shows .

What radar?

[ShiroiHikari]

So has anyone here actually read these books? Is the "mature content" just arbitrarily added or is it in the source material too?

Also there really is no "radar" on cable television-- cable networks can legally air whatever they want; they usually just choose not to because they don't want to lose advertising dollars. HBO is a premium service so they don't need to rely on advertising dollars to survive. That's why they can "get away" with stuff like that.

[TheMewster]

What radar?

The media watchdogs. Since I think it's not a very common channel (premium possibly definitely not on cable) HBO can get away with a lot, almost on a pornographic level. Then again I don't watch it so I wouldn't know what I'm talking about and should shut up now.

[mechana2015]

HBO actually can ignore the radar entirely BECAUSE they're a specialty Cable network that can only be purchased by request. Their status as an add on allows them to do whatever they want more or less because they don't fall under the same category as normal stations. They're not really 'getting away with' anything so much as taking advantage of their special status as a premium channel.

[ShiroiHikari]

...Are my posts invisible or something?

[Atria35]

...Are my posts invisible or something?

Nope. I think Rocky answered it- the mature content is in the books and some of it is pretty relevant to the plot, so you can't get away without it.

[uc pseudonym]

I respectfully disagree with the OP. By all means, don't watch the series if you want to avoid sex and violence. Those are going to exist in any adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire. But please don't say the characters have no redemptive qualities (due to full frontal nudity, apparently) based on your objections to the content.

The series is relatively dark, but the characters are human. Plenty of them are bad people, yes. But others are noble and many have simple human motivations that lead them to do things both bad and good. Though the series is not completed, based on the four books so far I can say that it is definitely a notable fantasy which pushed forward the worldbuilding of cultures and families.

So has anyone here actually read these books? Is the "mature content" just arbitrarily added or is it in the source material too?

I can't watch the series due to location, but from what I've heard it's a fairly faithful adaptation (just simplifying things and changing the order around). There are really only two major sex scenes in the first book (as in ones that could not be removed without changing the entire plot), one of which would probably have been in the first episode. HBO could probably show sex where the novel only implied or referenced, but I doubt they'll be adding it just for fun.

Really, though the series does have feature sex, it's neither as frequent nor as explicit as in many other fantasy series written for adults. What ASOIF does have is a fair number of crude characters and references to sex, so if that bothers you then you should probably avoid it.