Game Of Thrones: 13 Things You Learn Rewatching Season 1

6. The Lower Budget Didn't Really Hurt It

It's a bit odd to think of Game of Thrones' first season being low budget, when it had money most TV shows of that time could only dream of. Most of the Season 1 episodes were estimated to have cost around $6m each. It's nothing to be sniffed at, but it wasn't enough to show the battles, as evidenced by the fact the showrunners had to fight for more money to make Season 2's Blackwater.

This meant that battles couldn't really be shown in the first season, which sets it apart from most that follow, given they've become a series hallmark. And yet, despite not having as much money, it never suffers from it. The smaller moments are all so good that it never feels like it needs the bigger budget at this point.

It's a smaller scale, more self-contained story than the sprawling epic that would follow (I mean, S1 was sprawling too, but in relative terms it wasn't), which means the low budget actually works. And it forces them to get creative too: the Battle of Whispering Wood is expertly done, for example. When they try to do something similar in Season 7, it doesn't quite work as well because we're so used to the big action sequences, but Season 1 doesn't lose anything on rewatching despite that.