George R.R. Martin didn’t just create one of TV’s biggest franchises; he’s also an avid TV viewer, and he’s name-checked some of the greatest shows ever made as his personal favorites. As the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series and its related materials, Martin has his name on two of HBO’s best and most popular shows: Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
Martin wrote an episode of each of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, and he’s credited as the co-creator of House of the Dragon alongside Ryan Condal. In 2023, in response to Vanity Fair naming one of his Game of Thrones episodes as one of the greatest TV episodes of all time, Martin wrote a blog post about his own personal favorite episodes of television.
He said that the one picked by Vanity Fair — season 2, episode 9, “Blackwater” — was also his favorite of the episodes he wrote. But he also had plenty of praise for shows he had nothing to do with, including all-time classics like Breaking Bad and The Wire and more underrated gems like Rome and Deadwood.
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Rome
A Historically Accurate Chronicle Of The Birth Of The Roman Empire
Although it was canceled after just two seasons, Rome remains a masterpiece of television. It’s a serialized chronicle of the early days of the Roman Empire, and it’s been widely praised for its accurate portrayal of both broad historical events and the minutiae of everyday life in Ancient Rome.
Rome was an early precursor to the kind of depth and spectacle that audiences could expect from Game of Thrones.
Martin named it as one of his favorite shows, and it’s easy to see why. Rome was an early precursor to the kind of depth and spectacle that audiences could expect from Game of Thrones. It has riveting plotlines, compelling characters, top-tier acting, and jaw-dropping production values.
8
Deadwood
A Revisionist Western Combining History & Fiction
Martin named another criminally underrated HBO series, Deadwood, as one of his favorite shows. Set in the 1870s, Deadwood charts the titular settlement’s growth from a camp into a full-blown town. It blends the lives of its fictional characters with the lives of real historical figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
Deadwood is a gritty revisionist western in the vein of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, deconstructing the tropes of the genre and presenting a darker, more historically accurate portrayal of life in the Old West. Deadwood was canceled much too soon, but it did get a movie to wrap things up.
7
Fargo
The Coens’ Darkly Comedic Masterpiece Comes To The Small Screen
Fargo
10/10
- Release Date
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2014 – 2024-00-00
Another show that gets an honorable mention in Martin’s blog post is Fargo, Noah Hawley’s TV adaptation of the classic Coen brothers movie. Rather than directly adapting the plot and characters of the movie, Hawley has instead replicated the unique tone of the Coens’ Oscar-winning masterpiece.
At its core, Fargo is a quintessentially Midwestern murder mystery with a pitch-black sense of humor, about ordinary people getting swept up in a life of crime. Using an anthology format, Hawley has reimagined that basic premise five times across five seasons. Some of Fargo’s seasons skew closer to the movie than others, but they’ve all gotten the tone just right.
6
Six Feet Under
A Show About Death That Celebrates Life
Martin had a lot of praise for Alan Ball’s morbid dramedy Six Feet Under, but he especially lauded the series finale. He hailed Six Feet Under’s final episode as “far and away the best finale in the entire history of television.”
He added that he “cannot imagine how anyone could possibly do better.” Martin is, of course, associated with one of the most notoriously disappointing finales in the history of television, but Six Feet Under set a very high bar.
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Throughout most of its run, this story of a dysfunctional family running a funeral home was mired in the anguish and anxiety surrounding death. But the finale focuses on the joys of life and the excitement of new beginnings. It provides all the closure that audiences could’ve asked for (and still leaves them wanting more).
5
Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker’s Twilight Zone For The Social Media Age
Charlie Brooker’s hit anthology series Black Mirror brings The Twilight Zone’s twisty, disturbing horror-of-the-week storytelling into the social media age. Every episode takes a technological phenomenon to the furthest extreme imaginable. An annoying ad-supported subscription service becomes a dying woman’s lifeline. Instagram likes become the biggest deciding factor in the socioeconomic hierarchy.
Black Mirror began airing on Channel 4 in the UK before being acquired by Netflix and turned into a global hit.
Martin praised Black Mirror as “an extraordinary series in so many ways,” but singled out season 3, episode 4, “San Junipero,” for being “the episode I love to watch over and over, and tell my friends to watch.” Where most Black Mirror episodes are bleak, demoralizing affairs about the worst of humanity, “San Junipero” is a feel-good love story.
4
Mad Men
A Poignant, Sometimes Offbeat Look At Ad Men In The 1960s
Mad Men
10/10
- Release Date
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2007 – 2015-00-00
One of the shows that gets name-checked in Martin’s blog post is Mad Men. On paper, Mad Men might sound like a really boring show. It’s all about the office politics of an ad agency in the 1960s. Almost every scene sees its characters sitting around a boardroom, chain-smoking and discussing branding concerns.
But the genius of the series’ writing is that, even though it doesn’t have beheadings like Game of Thrones or evil technology like Black Mirror (unless you count the computer), it’s still just as captivating as those shows. Don Draper and his colleagues are all such nuanced, complex characters — and the actors play them all so beautifully — that they’re endlessly watchable.
Mad Men deftly blends riveting character drama with zany, off-the-wall humor, and Martin’s favorite episode exemplifies that curious tone. Season 4, episode 7, “The Suitcase,” is just about Don and his secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy staying in the office after hours to work on a campaign, but it’s a touching examination of their unique relationship, a hilarious farce with vomit and a drunken brawl, and a profoundly existential two-person play.
3
The Sopranos
David Chase’s Groundbreaking Gangster Drama
Martin wrote that The Sopranos, David Chase’s groundbreaking gangster drama, had “lots of great episodes,” but he reserved particular praise for season 3, episode 11, “Pine Barrens,” a bottle episode in which Paulie and Christopher take a whacked Russian into the woods, only to find that he’s not quite dead yet. This violent farce becomes a modern-day Waiting for Godot.
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Martin said that, like the rest of us, he spent the rest of the series waiting for that Russian to reappear. Of course, he never did reappear and his fate remained a mystery. That was Chase’s style, and one of the things that made his show so powerful and true to life: he never gave the audience closure, not even in the final episode.
2
The Wire
David Simon’s Journalistic Study Of America’s Broken Institutions
The Wire
10/10
- Release Date
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2002 – 2008-00-00
Martin had extremely high praise for The Wire. He wrote, “The show was so good, it came close to perfection pretty frequently.” David Simon channeled his experiences as a crime reporter in Baltimore into this journalistic study of America’s broken institutions. Simon depicts the drug trade, the local government, and the media with an almost documentary-like sense of realism.
Simon depicts the drug trade, the local government, and the media with an almost documentary-like sense of realism.
The Wire episode named by Vanity Fair as the best was the one in which Stringer Bell was cornered by two of his enemies and killed in cold blood. Martin felt that the one in which fan-favorite Omar Little was unceremoniously gunned down in a convenience store hit a little harder, but that the show as a whole was a masterpiece.
1
Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan’s Game-Changing Saga Of A Teacher-Turned-Kingpin
Traditionally, television was all about maintaining the status quo. Week after week, the characters would all stick around in the same place, remain the same people with the same personalities, and stay exactly like that for as long as the show went on. But Vince Gilligan changed the game with Breaking Bad. This show is all about change.
Gilligan famously set out to turn a mild-mannered teacher like Mr. Chips into a ruthless drug lord like Scarface. George R.R. Martin named Breaking Bad as one of his favorite shows, and specifically pointed to season 5, episode 14, “Ozymandias,” which he described as “heart-wrenching.” This is the climactic episode where Walter White’s two worlds collide and he goes full Scarface.
Source: George R.R. Martin
