Game of Thrones

Game is a genuinely mind-boggling piece of adaptation, cast more or less perfectly (except for Kit Harington's Jon Snow, who relies too much on the soap opera actors handbook of serious faces), with expert control of the story lines, gorgeous and diverse settings, and such seriousness of purpose and consistent internal logic that I find the least realistic thing about it to be that the men of [N]ights Watch don't wear hats.

Can. Not. Wait. [9 Apr 2012, p.39]

Once you get back in the rhythm of this enthrallingly sprawling, lusty and brutal saga, flaunting enough sex and violence to make a Hobbit faint, it's impossible not to succumb to Thrones' visceral, dark magic.

With all its harsh realism and attention to detail it feels more authentic than a lot of the actual historical dramas on TV.

Many heads bend over this adaptation, each belonging to a master of his or her craft, and what emerges is a truly new, and miraculously accurate, definition of epic television.

The characters bring us into the action and, once there, we want to follow every development.

This is a show worth watching, and worth the effort it might take for newbies to get up to speed.

That Thrones remains so utterly unpredictable makes it even more mesmerizing.

As the follow-up to an incredibly strong debut season, it's even more fun.

The Game is worth it. Really.

TV's best (but do your homework before diving in).

Game of Thrones is so much more than a genre series, a fantasy epic. It's a series that doesn't need to feel dramatically inferior up against the likes of Mad Men or Breaking Bad, Justified or anything else.

It's another level of pop culture wizardry to make such storytelling seem so vivid, so vital, and just plain fun.

GOT is easily television's most ambitious drama for expansive storytelling, but it doesn't shirk its duty to tell smaller stories about individual characters. That the series manages to excel at both is rewarding and breathtaking in its achievement.

The storytelling by executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and their writing staff is increasingly assured and judicious; the first-rate cast continues to mine the full depth of the material; and the show itself is visually commanding, especially in the hands of Alan Taylor, who directed the first two episodes of the season.

HBO has the ingredients for a series that puts nearly every other genre offering to shame.

Each week the story unfolds like a tapestry, its intricate stitches slowly creating not just a scene but a whole world. It's a world to get lost in, but not always easy to endure.

This is a sprawling, exciting, blood-soaked story, filled with great set pieces and wonderful actors.

It's all a lot to swallow, let alone digest. But Game of Thrones nonetheless is an undertaking worth applauding for its audacity if not always for its overall senses of direction or cohesion.

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have so far done a remarkable job adapting a story with even more moving parts than the show's very cool title sequence.

Once you sort out all the teams and players, Game of Thrones falls together like a good Western. But you may need all 167 hours, at least at first, to do the sorting.

Game of Thrones's second season is not as wholly engrossing as its first, and the blame for this rests solely on the source material, that, while commendable, isn't as altogether vital as the initial novel.

The new episodes present an almost a too intricate meditation on power. Game of Thrones demands that you pay attention or be left behind.

Game of Thrones starts less like an epic and more like a session of "Medieval Sims."