Critic Reviews

This is truly the best visit to Westeros in nearly a decade - certainly since Cersei blew up the Great Sept of Baelor anyway.

There are moments of absolute emotional devastation in this series, but "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" is far and away the lightest, most nimble "GoT" show to come along so far.

That humorous, more light-hearted tone is exactly what compellingly sets the series apart within HBO’s sprawling franchise, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms manages to brilliantly balance its comedic edge with more serious, emotionally-driven turns.

Claffey and Ansell are the show’s beating heart, allowing Dunk and Egg to become one of the most fascinating and tender friendships this universe has put to screen. .... Throughout its six-episode run, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” makes it clear that fantasy television can still surprise you, and when it comes to the genre, bigger isn’t always better.

HBO’s wonderfully modest new Game of Thrones spinoff. .... If we’re lucky enough to get more seasons, I expect we’ll be witness to the making of a future legend who deserves to be more than a footnote in the annals of Westeros history.

But Knight's ambitions are modest, its charms are huge. It's a reminder that while Game of Thrones is best remembered for its spectacle, many of the series' most effective moments — especially early on, when it was building an audience big enough to justify the cost of dragons and zombie hordes — were similarly modest, and mostly involved two or three characters having conversations inside castles.

It’s the little things, and in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the little things add up nicely.

"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" offers a refreshing antidote to "Game of Thrones" fatigue, with crude humor and humble humanity.

The result evokes memories of the charming 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale, with the biggest nods to the original series being the familiar last names and the memory of dragons at the corners of the frame.

“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” takes the bad of life in Westeros with the good, as bad as “the bad” ends up being, and Claffey’s performance brims with such sincere charm that it’s nearly impossible not to believe, as he and Egg both do, in the myth of chivalry; under harsh light the myth is disproven, but remains worth living up to anyways.