Game of Thrones: how does the TV series compare to the books?

The Game of Thrones TV series so far covers approximately 1,980 pages of George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. How does it compare to other famous page-to-screen adaptations?

Seasons 1-3 of Game of Thrones clock in at a combined time of 1,590 minutes

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Game of Thrones: how does the TV series compare to the books?

The Game of Thrones TV series so far covers approximately 1,980 pages of George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. How does it compare to other famous page-to-screen adaptations?

Patrick Scott

*This piece contains mild spoilers for the third season of Game of Thrones*

Monday night sees the return of HBO’s Game of Thrones to our living rooms and, although the saga is already running in excess of 26.5 hours long, it’s actually far more economical with its source material than many other famous page-to-screen adaptations.

Seasons 1-3 of Game of Thrones clock in at a combined time of 1,590 minutes and cover approximately 1,980 pages of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. This means that the TV show spends roughly 0.8 minutes of screen time per page of text.

In comparison, the first season of Netflix’s House of Cards spent 1.56 minutes per page of Michael Dobbs’ novel of the same name. Similarly, the first season of US crime drama Dexter spent 2.4 minutes per page of Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Boardwalk Empire has, to date, spent a luxurious 8.77 minutes per page of Nelson Johnson’s account of prohibition-era corruption.

However, there are some long-running series that maintain a respectful relationship with the works they are based on. For example, Inspector Morse ran for 13 years from 1987 and only spent 0.95 minutes per page of Colin Dexter’s tales in all that time.

When it comes to memorable book-to-film transitions, Peter Jackson’s take on The Hobbit stands out as being excessive in the time it grants to the text it is based upon.

Assuming that the final installment of The Hobbit trilogy will last approximately the same length of time as each of the first two, Jackson will have spent around 1.3 minutes per page of J.R.R. Tolkien's original work. Even when the The Lord of the Rings appendices that are featured in The Hobbit film are factored into the mix, the films still spend over a minute on each of its source’s pages.

Compared to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (0.53 minutes per page) and the Harry Potter film adaptations (0.35 minutes per page), the length of The Hobbit seems particularly indulgent.

The Hobbit, however, looks set to be surpassed in this regard upon the announcement that J.K. Rowling’s 42 page Comic Relief book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, is to be made into a trilogy of feature films on its own.

The makers of the Game of Thrones TV adaptation have little to fear, it seems, in terms of boring their audience. This is reinforced by looking at the US viewing figures and episode ratings for each season in the line chart above.

Viewing figures have gone from strength to strength, starting at 2.2m in season one and rising to around 5.5m by the end of season three. Viewer ratings have been consistently high throughout with the penultimate episode of season three, featuring the notorious Red Wedding scene, achieving an average rating of 9.9/10 on IMDB.