In Westeros, a century before Ned Stark and Daenerys Targaryen, Ser Duncan The Tall (Peter Claffey) teams up with his tiny boy squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), seeking adventure.
When is Game Of Thrones not Game Of Thrones? When it’s A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms. This second spin-off from George R.R. Martin’s fantasy world of Westeros contains no actual thrones (or games thereof), no warring noble houses, no Starks, no Lannisters, no wars, no sex, not even any dragons — save for one unfortunate puppet. The only part of King’s Landing we see is the filthy slum Flea Bottom; the biggest battle that takes place is a jousting tournament.
Like the novella upon which it was based, The Hedge Knight, written by Martin in 1998 and beginning his ‘Tales Of Dunk And Egg’ series, this show offers a markedly different vibe to the franchise’s flagship. Where the main Game Of Thrones series and sister show House Of The Dragon were preoccupied with royals and aristocrats, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms centres a lowborn knight, its tone and feel correspondingly different. This is even reflected in Dan Romer’s folksy-whistly score; Ramin Djawadi’s original theme tune is only briefly deployed, for a brilliantly scatological fake-out in the first episode. (In a valiant commitment to that tonal shift, there is at least one piss, shit or fart joke per episode.)
It’s Dunk and Egg’s odd-couple relationship and shared green-gilled innocence which anchors this low-stakes, high-reward show.
We first meet Ser Duncan The Tall (Peter Claffey), a humble hedge knight — “like a knight, but sadder,” as one character uncharitably puts it — burying his late mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). Claffey, a former rugby player who only began professional acting three years ago, is marvellous company across these six episodes. A giant oak of a man, “thick as a castle wall” as the books had it, he cuts a formidable frame but plays Dunk with suitable sweetness and blue-eyed, boyish innocence, earnestly trying to uphold the modest but honourable legacy of his former master.
Then he meets Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), a precocious little bald boy desperate to see the world, while hiding an enigmatic past. Looking and sounding a little like the “there is no spoon” kid from The Matrix, he’s an excellent foil to Ser Dunk. There are some great supporting characters peppered in here — best among them Daniel Ings, magnetically brilliant as a boozy, braggadocious Baratheon — but it’s Dunk and Egg’s odd-couple relationship and shared green-gilled innocence which anchors this low-stakes, high-reward show.
It’s certainly slight, by design, and while some Thrones fans might miss the sweeping canvases and palace intrigue of the other shows, it remains splendidly and handsomely shot; the muddy helmet-eye-view camera angles of the jousting scenes in particular prove a highlight. And like its heroes, it keeps an old-fashioned, chivalric moral compass: a series simply sworn to protect the innocent.
Just as The Mandalorian is to Star Wars, this is a sweetly enjoyable bite-size alternative to a franchise’s unwieldy mothership — a shaggy-dog story about a big lad and his little mate.
