"The accents in Game of Thrones et al" Topic

I wsn't listening all that hard to GoT, but it seemed to me that everyone spoke in the standard Histrical Epic English accent.

I will be curious to see how our British cousins perceive the accents. Do you hear American?

Khal Drogo spoke fabricated Dothraki with pure Iowa-Hawaiian dude twang. The Imp eschewed a fake British accent.

You seem to have missed out on the northern and Celtic shadings of Historical Epic English provided by much of the rest of the cast.

Allen

Hm, Allen is critical of something. Go figure.

They should have the characters speak in Laotian. That would make the show accessible to a wider audience. Or not.

The future Conan was speaking Klingon, so his accent does not count.

I hope there are no elf songs.

Critical? You don't know critical. This initial episode gets a pass from me, because I think they did a fairly good job of packing a shedload of Martin-drivel into an hour, and not making the storyline too obtuse. (However, I think any normal person who had not already suffered through the novels would have a hard time keeping track without a scorecard and a synopsis.)

No elf songs, I suspect, but wait until… no, that would be a spoiler. Or until… no, that would be a spoiler, too.

Anyway, you do know that characters in this series are not… no, that's too close to a spoiler, as well.

What you need to understand, John, is that if they do stick too close to the verbage of the novels, elf songs would come as a blessed relief. I suspect that after about the third hour, you are going to feel much the same unrelieved pain and anguish that Frodo felt upon returning to the Shire, and will be hankering for the Grey Havens.

Allen

Allen, how many of the novels did you suffer through? What made you keep going back? The same sense of "I just want to find out what happened next!" that drove me to start and finish so many wretched Turtledove novels?

Dang! I was kinda hoping the show would encourage me to read the novels. (Couldn't get past chapter 1.)

There is no such thing as an "American" accent.

As a matter of interest, how many characters did it introduce, as opposed to, say, The Wire..?

People seemed to be able to follow that easy enough.

"Allen, how many of the novels did you suffer through? What made you keep going back?"

Just three. "It Has To Get Better" syndrome.

Allen

I've never even heard of the books, but had no trouble with the first episode of the TV show. I enjoyed it. It was a nice change to have something a bit more in-depth and adult than the usual sword'n'sorcery fantasy.