Karl Puschmann: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Steal

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms  

A century before the events of "Game of Thrones," two unlikely heroes wander Westeros. In an adaption of George R. R. Martin's novella "The Hedge Knight," a young and naive but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg, face a series of dangerous exploits. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and images of the last dragon have not yet passed from living memory, great destinies and powerful foes await these improbable and incomparable friends (Neon).  

  

Steal 

An ordinary office worker, Zara, finds herself at the heart of a heist; a typical work day at a pension fund investment company is upended when a gang of violent thieves burst in and force Zara and her best mate Luke to execute their demands (Prime Video). 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be it's time to get your screen time picks
for this weekend. Carl Pushman is here with his two
picks for this weekend, Get a cow.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Good morning, Jack, care are you you very well?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thank you? So we're going to begin with the show
on neon this week, tell us about a Night of
the Seven Kingdoms.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Well, this is the second spin off in the Game
of Thrones franchise. Now, when you think Game of Thrones,
you think grand scheming between great families, deep political intrigue,
big bloody battles between nations, sometimes with dragons, and Night
of the Seven Kingdoms has none of that. Instead, it's
a small story about two inconsequential characters with relatively low stakes,

(00:50):
and I think it's all the better for it. The
series follows two characters, the affably dim witted Dunk He's
a hedge night, which is named that because they have
no lord or castle, so tend to wander around the
land sleeping under hedges, and his squire, a precocious intelligent
child named egg usumably on account of his bullhead. And
it's all about their misadventure misadventures entering a big justing

(01:11):
tournament which they hope to win against much better prepared,
much better trained, and much wealthy opponents. After a night
of drinking with the Lord a Barathian for anyone who
knows what that means in the Game of Thrones world,
Dunk asks how much chance he has of winning the tournament,
to which the reply is no chance. And that's it.
That's the show. There's no political maneuvering, there's no big

(01:32):
backsteading plots, there's no sudden shock murderous twists. It's essentially
a buddy comedy, which sounds weird for the grim dark
fantasy world of West Ross, but I think it works
surprisingly well. Duncan Egg's relationships is similar to that of
the young Aria Stark and the gruff Mercenary the Hound
in the original Game of Thrones series, so if you
enjoyed that pairing in the show, you'll find a lot

(01:53):
to like hear After Game of Thrones and its follow
up House of the Dragons, I found the Low Stakes
to be refreshing. It's a really fun story, which is
not something you could always say about those shows. And
I also thought it was really nice to be focused
on a can simply living in the world as opposed
to someone who's trying to shape the world, if you
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, yeah, that sound is great. Okay, So that's really good.
Interesting that sometimes just maybe pairing things back a little
bit can actually really benefit of production.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
So I think so. And what I also really liked
about it is it's still got that Game of Thrones
rittness richness to it, Like the world is so thoroughly conceived,
and you can see how much money has been spent.
Because it's a small show, the production is still large
and obviously expensive, like it looks the gajillion dollars it's. Yeah,
and it still has some of those trademarks, like there's

(02:40):
a lot of violence, there's nudity. There's a gross out
comedy opening scene which hilariously undercuts the seriousness, which you know,
you think of Game of Thrones, you think very serious,
completely undercut. Maybe don't be eating your dinner when you
watch the opening five minutes of the show, as my advice,
but yeah, it's a it's a slam dunk.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Oh fantastic, Okay, cool. So that's a Night of the
Saving Kingdoms. That's streaming on Neon on Prime Video Steal Yeah, leaving.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Game of Thrones but behind but not one of its stars.
The lead of Steelers Sophie Turner, who played Sanza Stark
in the original hit series. In this modern day heist thriller,
she plays Zara Dunn, a mid level office worker at
a financial institution that manages many of England's pension funds.
The show starts with her hungover at work, which is
something I'm sure you would never be guilty of, Jack

(03:26):
before her Before her day gets astoundingly worse when a
group of highly trained and menacingly violent baddie storm the office,
waving machine guns around and pistol whipping people for looking
at them funny. While her coworkers are all march gunpoint
into a conference room, Zara and her colleague are forced
to transfer four billion pounds out of the pension funds
and into account given to them by the robbers. That

(03:49):
opening episode is fast paced and just operating on adrenaline,
and it completely sucked me in. Like all good height stories,
there's twists, there's turns, Problems pile up for Zara to
contend with while trying to stay alive. The scope sort
of expands out, showing flashing back to the events leading
up to the heist, and then seeing that conspiracy sort

(04:10):
of spiral out to include the gang of thieves themselves,
the police, some savory dick click, there's an even mi
I five who have their own reasons to be nosing
around the investigation. After that explosive opening episode, the slicking,
glossy thriller is like thoroughly addictive viewing. I do think
it's as it goes on, does start to add one
layer too many, but I'm still heavily invested in giving

(04:31):
to the end of this thing. It's only six episodes,
and you know, I think there's going to be a
big payoff at the end, which I'm looking for.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Due great. Oh it sounds good.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Okay, So that's Steal.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
That's on Prime Video, and A Night of the Seven
Kingdoms is on Neon. You can hear more from Carl,
of course on his substack screen crack, and those shows
will be up on the News Talks.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
He'd b website for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.