The captivating Game of Thrones and its many strands and strengths

Visiting bro in law J was regaling me with tales from the series of novels that forms the basis for the HBO series "Game of Thrones" - told J I would definitely never read the books, but was interested in seeing the series. Started with the first two episodes and, so far, very impressed: the series has the extraordinary production values we've come to expect from HBO and its British allies, as interesting to look at as Rome - an entire medieval world, with castles and villages and great open spaces and mysterious huge human construction - The Wall - creating beautifully and perfectly. The acting is good, in that highly trained British way - from the grizzled old knights (and King) to the insufferable King in exile to the forlorn mother and wife furious as her husband heads off to a war she considers avoidable to the obnoxious and self-centered queen and the bratty kids in the royal court. Some really nicely developed scenes and situations and character conflicts - a fight between a prince and the butcher's boy that turns out bad for guess who, two attempts on the life of the knight's youngest son (he saw the queen and her brother engaged in incest so they have to wipe him out) - especially one where he's rescued quite dramatically and gruesomely by wolf pup he's raised, and the long trek of the king's bastard son to his new post on The Wall guarding the northern kingdom, as it becomes more obvious that The Wall is really just a glorified prison camp. The story is a fiction set in quasi-medieval Europe with elements of fantasy (ghosts and such) weaved through. Takes a lot of concentration in first two episodes to get the strands of the story fixed in your mind - various rulers and kingdoms and vassals and their families - and the dialogue, esp in the first episode, can be very hard (for an American) to pick up in its entirety, but I find it a very captivating series and will keep watching, at least for a while (M less enthusiastic, btw).