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HBO continues to stoke interest—well, mine, anyway—in its big 2011 debut, Game of Thrones, the fantasy series based on the novels of George R. R. Martin. This minute-long trailer looks very promising, focusing on provincial nobleman Ned Stark, the character through whom the audience initially encounters the story’s intrigues. And to my eye it has the right dirty, lived in look for a series that will challenge some viewers’ ideas of what fantasy looks like on the screen—more swords than sorcery, played out in a society where magic is mostly a legacy of the distant past. (Or so its people believe.)
But the short trailer, obviously, can only give a sense of the vast sweep of narrative that the books cover—involving political upheaval in a kingdom just recovering from a civil war, an exiled princess plotting a return a continent away, the stirrings of an ancient supernatural threat beyond a barrier wall in the far north, and much, much more—so I can’t wait to see how the actual series deals with the expansive story. In the meantime, enjoy the shiny swords!