CLICK HERE TO WATCH
Since the day Ned Stark agreed to be the King's Hand we've been taking bets as to how long he would last. Five episodes later and the last honourable man in King's Landing finally had enough, resigning after failing to convince Robert that murdering the pregnant Daenerys Targaryen would make him as bad as the man he deposed. Given that Jaime Lannister subsequently slaughtered all Ned's most loyal men and Robert doesn't yet know about Catelyn taking Tyrion Lannister prisoner, we can only assume that things are about to get a great deal worse.
We already know that this show is populated by a number of people who lost acquaintance with sanity some time ago but Lysa Arryn might top the lot. The former Hand's widow, played with epic levels of queasy craziness by the wonderful Kate Dickie (best known for Andrea Arnold's brilliant, creepy Red Road) was starved down to the sharpest of angles and gave off a neurotic, unbalanced energy before she'd even uttered a word. By the time you realised that she was greeting her visitors with her seven-year-old son suckling her breast the only question still up for debate was who is the more insane: Lysa or Harry Lloyd's mad-eyed Viserys?
Eunuch spymaster Varys stepped memorably out of the shadows this week. Conleth Hill is a great stage actor and he brings just the right amount of creepy solicitude to this role, whether informing Ned that Jon Arryn was poisoned or having a schoolyard bragging contest about levels of deception with Littlefinger. The mock wounded look on his face when Littlefinger asked him whether he kept his balls in a box was a small moment, but beautifully done.
No comments:
Post a Comment