HBO is the home of mature television. Much like mature ratings on comic books, video games and a lot of movies, that doesn't necessarily mean that the stoytelling is grown up, or it explores themes in a mature manner. It means that it's got oodles of violence, swearing, and T&A. Game Of Thrones is certainly grown up in that respect. And there's nothing wrong with that! Trying to argue that it's in any way mature in any other terms, however? Get out of here. When you boil it down to the component parts, the target audience for Game Of Thrones is fourteen-year-old boys. The sort of audience that runs on hormones, so enjoys the amount of bare female flesh on show; the sort who think beheadings and other gratuitous violence is gnarly. There's nothing wrong with enjoying those things. Everybody's got a fourteen-year-old boy living inside of them. But implying that Game Of Thrones is implicitly a mature, grown up piece of storytelling simply because includes violence, nudity and sexual violence is like calling David After Dentist a movie because cameras were involved.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
