Here's a picture of Sean Bean as Eddard Stark.

I liked the first book. Struggled with the second book --  never got past the first quarter.

I am quite excited about this - i'd be equally excited to get the next book from Mr Martin but such is life......but this will be very good I think. HBO do excellent adapations.

Invitation to Westeros

Yes, this looks truly terrific and it might well become the BEST SHOW EVER. Sigh. Of course, no German tv station has picked it up yet.

Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish

so who watched last night? pretty good episode...i figured thats where they would end it, its waas an obvious break point

I've seen the first episode four times and I'm impressed by the production quality of the show, by the actors, by the script. It's been hard for me, having read the first four books, not to blurt out things that happen later in the story to people who don't know the it. The Prodigal Son very firmly, but politely, told me to zip it when I started to let something drop about Jaime that happens much, much later.

As one of the boards devoted to the show pointed out, there are scenes in the episode that did not happen in the book but those scenes do much to establish relationships between the characters in those scenes as well as giving insight into the characters themselves. Not being one of the anal retentive types who has a fit because a film is different from a book, I think the "liberties" taken in the first episode were necessary for the integrity of the episode and to explain things to people who are not readers of the books.

All in all, I give the first episode two thumbs up. I liked it so much more than Starz "Camelot" which is trying to be gritty and is mostly coming across as soft.

I liked it a lot better on a second viewing.  The first time some of the characters looked weird, but that feeling was gone the second time.  I think on the first viewing I was also trying to sync it up with the book too much.  I'll still reserve judgement for now except to say that HBO never does anything badly.  If I made a list of the 10 best shows of the last decade, at least 5 of them would be shows on HBO.

I have to admit, I am Not going to be reading any of GRRM's books until the Entire Series is completed. If he won't take his fans seriously, then I won't take him seriously until he proves different.

By the same token, I will not be watching the HBO series until it is all in the can and I am sure I can see it through to the end.

Pedro

I am very impressed with its accuracy relative to the books.  But my 1st thought was "so this is why the 5th book is years late!"

And they let you watch the episode online 1 week before airdate so I have seen through Episode 7.  Cool!

MN has something bigger than TX???  My bandwidth is 50 Mb + (gloat! Gloat!)  :-)