Game of Thrones makes it onto more End of Year lists celebrating 2015’s best TV shows, episodes, moments and even sex scenes.
HitFix’s annual TV Critics’ Poll places Game of Thrones at #6 on its Top 10 Television Shows of 2015, a list based on twenty-one critics’ top 10 lists.
Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times (one of the critics featured in HitFix’s poll, interestingly enough) includes Game of Thrones in her compilation of “the best things to happen on the flat screen this year.” Of Game of Thrones season 5 she wrote, “HBO’s astonishingly ambitious series continued to be astonishing and ambitious. There is still nothing like it on television.”
Showing off the show’s incredible social media power, Game of Thrones came in as the #1 most discussed TV show in Facebook’s annual Year in Review. Other buzzworthy shows included The Walking Dead, The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live
Neil Miller of Film School Rejects listed Game of Thrones at #4 on his 15 Best TV Shows of 2015 list, remarking that, “Thrones wasn’t perfect in season 5, but when it was on, it was way on. And it continues to reign as the biggest, baddest dragon in the land of televised entertainment.”
The Washington Post placed Game of Thrones as the third best TV show of 2015, with critic Hank Stuever saying, “I remain in awe of how many ways ‘Game of Thrones’ works as an epic piece of entertainment for both the casual viewer and the full-on obsessive fan.”
Variety’s Maureen Ryan includes Game of Thrones on her list of the 20 Best Returning Shows of 2015. She notes the controversies and issues that occasionally plague the show, but says, “Still, when it’s firing on all cylinders, whether in poignant and spectacularly acted character moments or in epic battles like ‘Hardhome,’ it’s one of the most transfixing shows on TV.”
On more specific lists, Yahoo has ranked “Hardhome” as one of 2015’s 26 best television episodes, describing it as a “remarkable, action-packed Game of Thrones episode that’s on par with any big-budget, big-screen blockbuster.” Buzzfeed crowned the White Walker resurrection scene from the episode as the #1 television moment of 2015.
Yahoo saluted Cersei’s walk of shame as the year’s 13th best TV moment, as “[t]he scene left your skin crawling, and made you feel something you never thought you would for Cersei — pity.”
Buzzfeed included Game of Thrones in another list- Sam and Gilly’s sex scene lands at #23 on its list of the 25 Hottest TV Sex Scenes, Ranked from Worst to Best … oh my!
Hodor!!
Brace yourselves…Best of 2015 lists are coming.
Oh my. Really?
Neil Miller encapsulated a lot of my feelings about S5 in that quote: “Thrones wasn’t perfect in season 5, but when it was on, it was way on. And it continues to reign as the biggest, baddest dragon in the land of televised entertainment.”
The show SO richly deserves the accolades but that doesn’t make it immune to thoughtful criticism. And GoT is still the only TV show I bother to watch live.
Well done, producers, cast, & crew. You earned it.
“Thrones wasn’t perfect in season 5”
That’s a massive understatement.
I am actually surprised at GoT’s rank (#3) given by the Washington Post. Cool. The pic accompanying the brief review has Dany speaking with Selmy (weep, weep). Barristan the Bold!!! Too soon! Too soon! RIP!
^This so much^
Also, Jon Snow was named 2015’s best character by MTV!
http://www.mtv.com/news/2616048/best-tv-characters-2015/
I wouldn’t mind a White Walker sex scene to be honest.
Is RamSa’s wedding night #1 on the best sexscenelist?
These lists remind me of the ridiculous amount of great television that we have these days. It’s a golden age, really. And yes, certainly Game of Thrones wasn’t perfect this season and wasn’t the best show of 2015, but I have no doubt that “Hardhome” was the best hour of TV this year.
Game of Thrones dropped from about 10 for S4 to 32 for S5 on the Guardian list basically for too much inconsistency.
Actually HitFix’s list is based on 50+ critics lists. That’s why it is so important that GoT made it in the #6. It’s like a combination of all those lists out there.
I hated Sam and Gilly’s sex scene. That was so weird.
Sam and Gilly’s scene was beyond cute and funny. I loved it.
Couldn’t stop luaghing for about 5 mins after ”oh my”.
Such an appropriate comparison: GOT and a dragon! I don’t want to sound like Stannis, but “baddest”? I think it should be taken as a figure of speech.
The sex scene between Sam and Gilly was both “aww!” and humorous. Watchers wanted it to happen, book readers were surprised that it happened so soon, but it was a pleasant surprise, unexpected after the violent previous scene. It conveyed so well the great discovery for Sam and Gilly’s tender feelings for him. It was reasuring that two innocents can have a bit of happiness even in the darkest place and time.
Davos’ Luck,
Besides Fargo’s ‘Rhinoceros’, of course. 🙂
But in all seriousness, I love the show, I loved Hardhome, but I certainly wasn’t expecting everyone to go crazy over it. The Gift was a much better episode, in my opinion. Can someone explain to me why Hardhome is supposedly 2015’s best hour of TV?
Bran is bae,
I hate Sam and Gilly. I can’t stand them in the show.
One of Roose Bolton’s 20 good leeches,
Are you me?
Game of Thrones is ranked #15 on the TV Critics Top 10 list on Metacritic. Isn’t it the first time that it isn’t featured in the top 10 since the first season ?
I don’t read the books but do you think Season 6 will be better ? I hope it’s not going to be like Dexter when it goes downhill after the fourth season.
Emmy 2015,
GoT is only on 21 critics’ list out of 50 critics- that’s how it earned the #6 ranking, by being ranked by 21 critics. Perhaps an off choice of words but I think that’s what she meant.
Oh, and I LOVED Sam and Gilly’s sex scene. It was sweet and dorky and awkward, just as it should be.
I thought the #6 was the highest position reached by all the 50 critics combined but what you said makes more sense.
You know, the thing that worries me, is that we are going to get so used to being spoiled on Spring Sunday night’s that when GoT ends, nothing will come close to filling that void.
Will GoT be the last true epic a premium cable service offers?
Think about it, think of how expensive GoT is to make and how rare a budget like that is justified due to it making the money back like GoT does. Paying the bill for an epic like this is usually a huge risk that doesn’t payoff. HBO has got lucky that GoT, despite costing so much to make, makes its money back with subscriptions, merchandise, critical acclaim, awards and just all around buzz.
When it ends, it could be many years until something even close to its size, scale and overall success comes along.
That is why I cross my fingers that there will be some kind of spinoff, be it Robert’s Rebellion or whatever.
I also hope that if D&D are truly tired of living and breathing GoT every waking moment, in order to oversee and bring us this awesome epic, that they co-produce or at least take some part in the spinoff.
Maybe we will get lucky again and HBO will find producers/writers/show runners that love this fantasy world as much as D&D and we do so that the epic can continue on such a glorious and successful scale.
Arthur,
It worries me too. I mean, just think about how much time we spend on this site in the off season, ffs, nevermind during the season. The time ordinary people take out of their lives to discuss and analyze, the time Sue and the mods put in to putting it all together, how much thought and emotion we put into these fictional characters. And that doesn’t even touch the production itself.
I mean, I’ve never been a part of a webforum for a TV series before, and I check this one daily. It’ll be an especially sad day when it is truly done.
Arthur,
yea I feel the same way, if done right season 6 thru 8 can be like something we have never seen on TV, there will obviously be critics, especially when season 8 comes along and the story will be put to bed. All the theories and speculations that many book-readers have had for years would be either legit or rubbished. I think a lot of the fans have become so obsessed with tinfoil and crazy theories that even when it is revealed that those theories didn’t really apply to the story, many will still be super angry lol
Roose is Azor Ahai,
I’ve got part of you in me.
One of Roose Bolton’s 20 good leeches,
“Oh my”
Pigeon,
Lord of Bones,
I think HBO is a very smart company.
This fact alone gives me hope.
I think there will be at least one spinoff and at least one miniseries all based in GRRM’s adult fantasy world of Westeros.
Didn’t HBO nab GRRM already and gain television rights to all the Westeros stuff? I swear that was reported years ago on this site.
HBO is about providing its viewers top notch quality entertainment, while making profit, and they have a HUGE fan base following this show which is top quality and highly profitable.
It makes perfect business sense for HBO to hold onto this fan base, build upon it, and expand the Westeros universe for many years to come.
So these facts give me hope =)
Puff… Liked the sex scene (cute characters being cute at their cutest, hands down), but didn’t liked the context: too much vibes of “sex as reward”… Agree with the Hardhome and the opinions, though.
No awards for Dorne? What a surprise. Hopefully for next season they realized that fans aren’t as stupid as they think and don’t need Jaime and Bronn there to make sense of it, and that they actually hurt the Dorne storyline more than I could have ever believed possible. Oh, and the Sam and Gilly sex scene might have been a little more believable if Gilly hadn’t almost been raped 5 minutes beforehand. I really don’t know what their fetish with rape is or why they felt it necessary.
This makes me ridiculously happy. Well deserved! As are the accolades for Hardhome. That was truly the most remarkable piece of television I’ve ever seen.
Also, count me in as one who adored the Sam/Gilly scene. It was a bright spot in an otherwise powerful but grim season.
For one, the production value. Especially the fightsequences look like they couldve come from a big summer blockbuster movie. Considering this is tv, and thus doesn’t have a similar budget (though big for tv), it’s an incredible feat ánd has great dramatic tension at the same time.
Per some Twitter comments, supposedly Kit and Maisie were hanging out in Belfast yesterday. In Maisie’s case, I wonder if she’s just visiting, because she said at the Emmys that due to scheduling changes she’d be finishing sooner, and if she was still filming now I can’t imagine that she’d have saved any time worth remarking on. But who knows? Plans change.
Dorne doesn’t have a storyline: only characters have those. Instead, Dorne is the backdrop for a storyline: and not just any storyline, but the single worst storyline in the books (Arianne’s). Cutting that was every bit as wise as keeping it would have been foolish.
By the same token, Jaime’s storyline needed to be retained: but the plodding, dead-horse-kicking, malaise of a plotline from the book needed to be cut. So, setting Jaime’s story in Dorne allows anything from Dorne that is important to the overarching plot to be retained while at the same time keeping Jaime’s story intact.
The problem with trying to do Robert’s Rebellion is simple: what would the story be? GRRM set up this basic plot background in order to feed a completely different set of stories. Trying to retroactively go back and superimpose a story onto that plot would be fraught with difficulties. This is the biggest reason why prequels are so much more difficult than sequels: a sequel has only small limits on the beginning, but can create whatever ending is necessary to have one or more characters evolve in such a way that it creates a story; a prequel already has an ending that was not devised to be the grand finale for character evolution.
Most probably, any prequels would just turn out to be banal world-building: and there would not be a market for that.
Sean C.,
Can you provide a link?
Maisie seems to have shot for atleast 4 weeks after making that statement, five if she was shooting last week. So she seems to have been wrong about it anyways, unless something got extended beyond schedule.
Kit Harington was there last week too. It seems more and more likely he will be back at the beginning of next season, based on how much he is shooting.
ghost of winterfell,
This was the tweet I was referring to then:
https://twitter.com/_spagetty/status/675480755343138818
Subsequent to that post, another Twitter picture indicates that not only are Sophie and Maisie still in town, Emilia is there as well:
https://twitter.com/DaleMc2/status/675848094551040000
iridium,
I liked it too. It was tasteful, sweet, and of course we were all rooting for Sam to finally see “how it feels to be with someone, to love someone and have them love you back.” 🙂
Arthur,
How about ” On the Road with Dunk and Egg”? Maybe the First Men fighting the Others in Battle for the Dawn?
bloodcraven,
Really?! The Jaime and Bronn scenes were the only things that made Dorne watchable. Without ties to characters that the audience cared about then it would have floated even further down Shit Creek.
Sam was almost killed in the same time frame. What’s unbelievable about two characters who love eachother wanting to express that love physically after a traumatic experience. Seriously, people know that the GoT universe is a shitty one where rape happens frequently. If it bothers them so much then stop watching.
OT: Have there been any sightings of Toby Sebastian , whether in Belfast or Girona?
Wimsey,
There was for Star Wars, The Hobbit, Better Call Saul, Twin Peaks, Gotham, etc.
It depends on the execution. I think the story of Lyanna and Rhaegar and the fall of the Targaryens would be a strong backbone and there’s plenty of other stories within there to flesh it out. I imagine it couldn’t go for longer than one or two seasons though.