The real world is way worse than Westeros – so why not let this heartwarming underdog tale of a simple soul and his ethereal squire be your safe space

‘Bless their little cotton socks!” is not a response one expects to have to any of the inhabitants of Westeros, the land of the bloody, violent, incestuous and often depraved series of Game of Thrones. But the endearing protagonists of the latest spin-off of the franchise, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, invite it.

Their names, as in the George RR Martin novellas on which the series is based, are Dunk – short for Ser Duncan the Tall – and Egg. Dunk (Peter Claffey, a suitably tall former Irish rugby union player, last seen in Bad Sisters) was squire to a hedge – non-noble – knight, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), who took the boy under his wing but never quite got round to knighting the man before dying. We first meet Dunk burying his mentor under an old elm tree and taking up his arms against the sea of troubles that are about to engulf him. Dunk is a simple soul (very simple, some might say – he may look like a medieval Jack Reacher, but inside he is more of an eager but baffled labrador) and sets out to find a lord he can himself serve as a hedge knight.

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© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

© Photograph: HBO/2025 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

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