8. Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish
Where do I begin? Aiden Gillen is a great actor. He knocked it out of the park in HBO's The Wire as City Councilman turned compromised mayor Tommy Carcetti and long before that he was in Queer as Folk. He was utterly convincing in both roles. Yet when it comes to Littlefinger, Gillen stands out as the sore thumb in a cast of manicured hands. He's a mystery to many, though unfortunately this often comes across as bad writing and not at all conducive to his book counterpart. He's written like a bumbling idiot who stumbled into power by some miracle. I have a seriously difficult time in believing that a man who out and out confronts the Queen with the fact that he knows the true parentage of her illegitimate twincest son (never happens in the books) could ever rise to the dizzy heights of a seat on the King's Council. Worse, he then, barely weeks after the death of her husband, attempts to rekindle a very old flame with Catelyn Stark
upon bringing her the bones of her dead husband! This is a bonehead move the levels of which even Mord the turnkey wouldn't have ever contemplated, yet here we are being told that one of the chief schemers and councillors in King's Landing would try and hit on his childhood sweetheart moments after dumping her husband's bones on her like a sack of shit. Anyone who has read the books would tell you in an instant, this is something the Littlefinger of the book wouldn't even dream of doing - he's simply much smarter than that. Yet in the show he's a thrice-damned fool, and fan podcast A Podcast of Ice and Fire have even branded him Middlefinger in the TV show, so little does he resemble his book counterpart. I can't even blame Aiden Gillen that much - to me, his performance is surprisingly stiff and even wooden at times, though the bulk of the blame almost certainly lies with the writers, who either have hugely misinterpreted the character of Petyr Baelish or simply decided to change him. For my money, this role should have been James Frain's, who played Thomas Cromwell to perfection in Showtime's The Tudors, but right now Middlefinger is easily the worst offender in Game of Thrones. How about you, dear reader? Which characters don't gel with your imagined counterparts? What other differences in the TV show rankled you?