James Delingpole James Delingpole

I hope more darlings are killed off in Game of Thrones season 6

So: Game of Thrones. Finally — season six — the TV series has overtaken the books on which it is based and the big worry for all us fans is: will it live up to the warped, convoluted, sinister genius of George R.R. Martin’s original material?

As regulars will know, the great thing about Martin is that you never know which of your favourite characters he’s going to kill off next. Really — and I can’t think of any other series of which this is true — they could die any moment, which is one of the things that makes it such gripping, unsettling, memorable TV. (The ritual immolation of that little girl last season, for example. Will it ever be surpassed?) It takes steel to kill your darlings as brutally as Martin does and I wonder if the series showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will have the stomach for it.

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