Shows like Game of Thrones

Loafing Oaf · 14-05-2019 1:01pm

is_that_so wrote: »

They had a two year contract with the BBC/HBO, which was not extended due to cost. You can see all that cost on-screen! Bruno Heller had plans for 2-3 more seasons and a film.

Oh right. I vaguely remember something about a movie but I'm surprised they were planning more series. The drama kind of drained out of Octavian's life once he consolidated power. Plus you'd be covering the same ground as I, Claudius. Maybe it was going to focus on "the further adventures of Titus and Lucius"

Flying Abruptly · 17-05-2019 2:17pm

The_Honeybadger wrote: »

....

Somebody on here at some stage recommended Black Sails which is a crude pirate adventure series. I watched a few episodes and didn’t think it was great there are several seasons so it must be popular I might come back to it at some stage.

...

Black Sails is a great show, really gets going towards the end of season 1. Don't understand why it's not more popular. It has the politics, history and fantastic naval battle scenes.

TerrorFirmer · 17-05-2019 2:21pm

Flying Abruptly wrote: »

Black Sails is a great show, really gets going towards the end of season 1. Don't understand why it's not more popular. It has the politics, history and fantastic naval battle scenes.

It has ridiculously decent production values for a show that wasn't even that popular. Around 500K viewers per episode.

It's a much slower and more thoughtful show than you'd expect too once it settles down. I enjoyed it personally.

Plus, Dickon Tarly is a cast main in it.

nix · 17-05-2019 2:29pm

I did enjoy black sails, but i felt it started strong and got progressively weaker, but still great overall.

I'm currently enjoying Rome, so thanks for the reminder ya'll

hgfj · 17-05-2019 2:35pm

I just finished watching Black Summer. A ten episode season. All episodes are only 35 mins long except for the last two which are 24 mins and 21 mins. Each episode feels like its an hour long. I binged watched it over two nights. It's a zombie type show akin to the walking dead but far, far superior. Tense and intelligent. Best show I've seen for a long time.

Taboo was another really good show. Only one season out so far. Has Tom Hardy as the main actor.

yourdeadwright · 17-05-2019 2:38pm

Isn't the wheel of time being made into a tv series

Sleepy · 17-05-2019 2:54pm

yourdeadwright wrote:

Isn't the wheel of time being made into a tv series

Yep, but the source material is ****e by modern fantasy standards. It was ground-breaking in it's day due to the sheer scope of the story and the world-building put into it but it suffers from some awful prose writing, goes into a slump after the 6th book and suffers from shallow, one-dimensional characters who are, for the most part, stupid. It'll need a hell of a polish to make something good out of it.

Black Flags I gave up on somewhere around the 3rd Season I think. I really liked it at first but it just went on too long.

is_that_so · 17-05-2019 2:56pm

Flying Abruptly wrote: »

Black Sails is a great show, really gets going towards the end of season 1. Don't understand why it's not more popular. It has the politics, history and fantastic naval battle scenes.

Stuck with it for two seasons, which I enjoyed, but then dropped it. All too predictable after a while and as mentioned above it started to get a lot weaker.

OneOfThem Stumbled · 17-05-2019 3:57pm

Greyfox wrote: »

BSG was amazing, its like the wire set in space

Bubby hill it was fraking gritty as felgercarb. Damnit!

Liam O · 17-05-2019 5:05pm

If you can get over some dodgy accents then Borgia kind of captures the political intrigue I think. Really enjoyed it but a lot of people find it tough to get over the Mish mash of accents.

amacca · 17-05-2019 7:21pm

mewso wrote: »

I would also love to see Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle made into a TV show.

Yup.....imo it would be perfect for a series if it was done properly.

beauf · 17-05-2019 10:04pm

amacca wrote: »

Yup.....imo it would be perfect for a series if it was done properly.

Great trilogy but not for the depressed would be The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Dyr · 18-05-2019 2:10pm

IAMAMORON wrote: »

Looking forward to Watchmen , out in the Autumn. Looks class.

Are you mental? That looks like pure dog****. Trump Derangement Syndrome is like hulkmania now...out of control.

s7ryf3925pivug · 18-05-2019 3:18pm

BsG was great, but had a stupid ending.

Thought The Last Kingdom was like a single threaded non-fantasy version of Game of Thrones.

is_that_so · 19-05-2019 10:17am

Richard Eager Mall wrote: »

BsG was great, but had a stupid ending.

Thought The Last Kingdom was like a single threaded non-fantasy version of Game of Thrones.

The BSG ending grows less annoying with repeated watching, but still too long though.
The Last Kingdom is loosely based on actual people and actual history, i.e. the first dominant king in England, so it was on a loser from the start!

s7ryf3925pivug · 19-05-2019 10:44am

is_that_so wrote: »

The BSG ending grows less annoying with repeated watching, but still too long though.
The Last Kingdom is loosely based on actual people and actual history, i.e. the first dominant king in England, so it was on a loser from the start!

Yeah I knew that about The Last Kingdom. I read some of the books too. Bernard Cornwall, who wrote other historical fiction including the Sharpe novels. They're good, entertaining light reading.

Stop moaning ffs · 19-05-2019 6:28pm

Knightfall
All about the knights Templar and the holy grail. And politics ridin and killing.
Mark Hamill is in the second season.
Few people I know love it. I’ve only seen the first episode. Obviously a huge budget. Great production values.
Waiting for thrones to finish to jump in properly.

beauf · 19-05-2019 6:30pm

I must check that out...

Stop moaning ffs · 19-05-2019 7:19pm

beauf wrote: »

I must check that out...

I don’t know how to do the thing with the thing but here’s a link to the trailer on YouTube for the first season

https://youtu.be/F9dtepkeR0I

Loafing Oaf · 19-05-2019 7:26pm

If you're looking for something purely historical, the mini-series Charles II: The Power and the Passion is a favourite of mine.

GottaGetGatt · 19-05-2019 7:46pm

The Expanse

Rezident · 19-05-2019 8:09pm

OP - thank you for reminding me what to watch when GoT ends tonight: I will rewatch Rome and Spartacus.

The end of the penultimate episode of season 1 of spartacus is still one of my favourite moments in TV, in fact I will watch it again now

GottaGetGatt · 19-05-2019 8:56pm

is_that_so wrote: »

Stuck with it for two seasons, which I enjoyed, but then dropped it. All too predictable after a while and as mentioned above it started to get a lot weaker.

Disagree, Season 1 was a bit slow but from there it went from strength to strength. Probably one of the best shows for character development I’ve ever watched. Deeply under rated Tv show that had some fantastic acting. People have mentioned Vikings, The Last Kingdom and Spartacus, all good shows but Black Sails blasts them out of the water. Excuse the Pun

Guffy · 19-05-2019 9:07pm

Just to add

Turn (Washington's spies)

Was decent enough. Newer one on Netflix is good too, can't think of the title but was a 1 season show about a servant who had been sentenced for murder.

The_Honeybadger · 19-05-2019 9:11pm

GottaGetGatt wrote: »

Disagree, Season 1 was a bit slow but from there it went from strength to strength. Probably one of the best shows for character development I’ve ever watched. Deeply under rated Tv show that had some fantastic acting. People have mentioned Vikings, The Last Kingdom and Spartacus, all good shows but Black Sails blasts them out of the water. Excuse the Pun

Really? Must get back on it I don’t think I gave it enough time I did find season 1 a bit slow like you said

is_that_so · 19-05-2019 9:43pm

GottaGetGatt wrote: »

Disagree, Season 1 was a bit slow but from there it went from strength to strength. Probably one of the best shows for character development I’ve ever watched. Deeply under rated Tv show that had some fantastic acting. People have mentioned Vikings, The Last Kingdom and Spartacus, all good shows but Black Sails blasts them out of the water. Excuse the Pun

I preferred Season 1, which I thought was good but I can't say I share any of the character development stuff. Some of them for me were just caricatures and you could almost predict by the end of Season 2 what a particular character was going to do. Yes a decent cast in the main but scripts just didn't hold up for me.

ThunbergsAreGo · 20-05-2019 11:31am

Spartacus is brilliant, might well be my favourite show of all time.

Despite its shallow appearance - and the crushing inevitability of their defeat, the character development is brilliant

paulbok · 20-05-2019 12:11pm

On a tangential topic, is there ever going to be another series as widely popular as GOT?
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for the golden age of TV? Definitely for live TV I think.
Sure, there are plenty of fantastic series out there, but none seem to hold people's and the media's attention anything like GOT has.
I honestly can't think of anything out now that has a broad fan base. Hopefully open to correction there as I could do with something new to watch.

The glut of the options has perhaps made it that bit harder, when there were fewer channels and streaming services, it was easier for more people to watch the same program (thinking back to Friends).
Now, GOT aside, you speak to your colleagues at work about what's on TV and everyone has a different 'must see' show and chances are you won't look at half them.
And then those everyone does watch is at different times, "stop talking about X, I'm only on season 2" etc.

I've only started The Soprano's recently so am nearly 20 years late to that party, I could be wrong but while I do remember some friends on about it when it was first broadcast, I don't remember much hype about it then apart from the finale, most people I know have binge watched it - it was one of the first big box sets along with The Wire (which was on TG4 around midnight when broadcast here? So not popular at the time) to become hugely popular giving rise to the binge watch phenomenon.

nix · 20-05-2019 3:30pm

paulbok wrote: »

I've only started The Soprano's recently so am nearly 20 years late to that party, I could be wrong but while I do remember some friends on about it when it was first broadcast, I don't remember much hype about it then apart from the finale, most people I know have binge watched it - it was one of the first big box sets along with The Wire (which was on TG4 around midnight when broadcast here? So not popular at the time) to become hugely popular giving rise to the binge watch phenomenon.

The Sopranos revolutionised TV, it was pretty much the first show that was just one long continuous story. Sure there were shows like the x-files and what have you, but they were a new case each week and only touched off the growing story arc every so often.. You could skip an episode or two and not miss much overall..

The Sopranos was the first of its kind, it was a top show when it came out, but got bigger as it went on when watching the episodes in order became easier, streaming services were non existent back then and even pirating a season of tv was very hard back then given internet speeds. It aired in 1999 and we in Ireland didnt start getting cable internet until like 2004ish, so we were all on dial up back then which was pish.

beauf · 20-05-2019 4:08pm

I always though it dipped in and out of the main story arc same other other shows, you could watch single episodes and not lose much of the main arc.

for example...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Barrens_(The_Sopranos)

That said I had no idea how popular it was until I looked it up.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/have-more-people-watched-the-sopranos-or-game-of-thrones-on-hbo.html/
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/was-the-sopranos-the-most-popular-show-in-hbos-history.html/
https://www.vulture.com/2007/06/the_sopranos_ratings_only_119.html

Shows like Game of Thrones

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