Crime
The Night Manager
Does it take a thief to catch a thief? Does it take lots of bad content to make a good TV show?
In the land of Westeros, knights who do good are a dime a dozen. They’re a dime, since everyone would rather pay for an obedient knight rather than a good one. They’re a dozen, too, since that’s roughly how many good knights exist in Westeros.
One such good knight is Ser Duncan the Tall. “Dunk” only recently became a knight, though no one saw him take Westeros’ knightly vows. When his master, Ser Arlan, died, Dunk acquired all the man had; three horses and a longsword.
But that puts Dunk way down on the knightly pecking order. Westeros is a land filled with knights who know how to fight better than Dunk; who have better finances than Dunk; who have never known the worry of where they’ll get their next meal. Such knights are often cruel or ruthless or, at best, uncaring. Dunk is no such knight, pledging protection to the weak and innocent.
And like Ser Arlan before him, Dunk serves no master. He is a hedge knight—what someone might call “self-made” in today’s age. To that end, he has no home, no lord to serve nor castle to lay his head. Dunk only has the trees and hedges to cover him when it rains.
With not even a silver coin to his name, Dunk rides off to the jousting tournament in Ashford Meadow, hoping he might win a duel, some coin, and perhaps acquire the attention of a lord to faithfully serve.
Instead, all Dunk acquires is a boy whose pale, bald head foreshadows his name: Egg.
The orphan boy insists on becoming Dunk’s squire, a prospect that Dunk initially refuses. Dunk knows that squiring for a hedge knight can be difficult, and he knows the boy’d be better off away from it. But Egg is insistent, catching fish for Dunk to eat and setting up the man’s camp, so Dunk hesitantly agrees to take him on.
Dunk may not have the coin or standing that the crueler knights of the land do. He doesn’t even know if, with no one to vouch for his swearing in as a knight, he’ll be allowed to compete in the jousting tournament.
But for all that, now he has three horses, a longsword and a squire named Egg.
Hey, it’s a start.
Set roughly a century before Game of Thrones and roughly a century after House of the Dragon, one might expect A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms to be yet another dreary George R.R. Martin tale about selfish lords, corrupting powers and human suffering.
Well, if you thought that, you’d only be half right.
Because while, yes, all three of those elements play their roles in the story, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms focuses its time on one who decidedly isn’t vying for power. A tale of conquering Westeros this is not; this is the story of a man just trying to get by while still pursuing good in Westeros. It’s all the more noble, since Westeros tends to reward evil and punish good.
Indeed, that seems to be George R.R. Martin’s point.
“Knights are supposed to be noble,” Martin said on The Official Game of Thrones Podcast. “They are supposed to be protectors. They’re supposed to protect the weak and the innocent […] But the reality of knighthood was not at all that. […] I find in the conflict between the ideal and the realistic tremendous grounds for powerful stories and for fiction.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms portrays a knight who longs for that ideal in a world filled with cruel and pragmatic knights and lords. And through Dunk’s perspective, we see the noble struggle of pursuing that good despite the danger it may bring the man. That makes this novella-turned-TV series Martin’s noblest venture.
But remember: this is set in Westeros, a land known for its frequent violence and crude indulgences. And so while Dunk may be one of the few in the land with selfless intentions, we’re nevertheless faced with bloody deaths, graphic nudity and crude language that, while perhaps a bit tamer than Game of Thrones’ excess, still reminds that Dunk is the outlier rather than the norm.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After burying Ser Arlan, Dunk decides to make a new name for himself as Ser Duncan the Tall at a nearby jousting tournament. But with no one to vouch for his knighting, Dunk struggles to be admitted in.
A man suffers as a crossbow bolt is pulled from his stomach, causing blood to pour from the wound. We see a montage of a man smacking a boy in the face. We watch Dunk bury Arlan. As Dunk hoists a sword and imagines himself a member of the City Guard, he tells an imaginary criminal to “stop raping, ser.” A man threatens to string Dunk up naked and repeatedly spear him in his rear with a wooden stake.
Dunk speaks with a trio of prostitutes, and multiple references to sex are made. Dunk stumbles across one of the prostitutes while her breasts are visible. We also see Dunk’s naked rear. Someone describes Dunk as “cowering like a maiden on her wedding night.” A man kisses two different women, intent on bringing them to bed with him. There’s a reference to a man’s genital size. Some may interpret homoerotic tension from one inebriated male character towards Dunk, but if this is the show’s intent, Dunk is too oblivious to notice.
While standing over Arlan’s grave, Dunk references the priests of Westeros. There are other references to the religious views of the land, including the “Seven above.” Someone offers money to any “man, beast or god” who can defeat him in the jousting tournament. Egg alleges that a “falling star” brings luck to those who see it.
A couple of men are inebriated.
We watch Dunk experience projectile diarrhea onscreen, his rear and the fecal matter visible as he struggles.
We hear the f-word 13 times, the c-word three times and the s-word once. Other crudities, like “a–,” “p-ss” and “b–tard” are used, too.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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