“The dialogue rocks with fabulous one-liners you’ll ache to try out in the pub”

Grace Dent's Game of Thrones journey continues this week, with season four

(Images: ©2016 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.)

“Season Four of Game of Thrones is absolutely not for the faint-hearted. It’s perhaps the most compelling and controversial part of the journey so far.

Grace Dent

It gave me sleepless nights and made me thump sofa cushions in rage, but as Tyrion Lannister so neatly sums it up: ‘If you want justice, you have come to the wrong place.’ If you’re a newcomer to Season Four, I envy you. With Sky Box Sets you can snap the blinds shut, turn off your phone and gobble the whole thing up like a Highgarden lemon cake.

You’ll be in need of sweetening up, because Season Four is a dank trek across the murky underbelly of human behaviour. A new level of ruthlessness is present, particularly within Daenerys Targaryen, who has her heart set on conquering city after city en route to power. Her wonderful pithy lines rang around my head for days. ‘They have a choice,’ she says about the residents of one town she captures. ‘They can live in my new world. Or they can die in their old one.’

The dialogue in Season Four rocks with fabulous one-liners you’ll ache to try out in the pub. Perhaps my favourite quips are from the ever-slippery but eternally victorious Littlefinger (Lord Baelish). ‘Always keep your foes confused,’ he says. ‘If they don’t know who you are and what you want, they can’t possibly know what you plan to do next.’ In our age of oversharing on social media, Littlefinger’s advice is glorious. Four seasons may have passed but we are still no closer to understanding the man behind the false smile.

As viewers we arrive from Season Three with our senses bruised by battle and betrayal to find Westeros in preparation for a far greater war still. We find House Lannister and House Stark, to whom we’ve nailed our colours over the past three seasons, fractured and in places decidedly feeble.

Jaime Lannister (HBO)

Fans of the dashing yet devious swordsman Jaime Lannister must watch his painful journey and Sansa Stark is whisked into her most bleak romantic liaison yet. Most importantly, we begin Season Four with no clear idea of who should rightfully sit on the Iron Throne.

Everyone, without exception, is flawed. Just as Ser Jorah reminds Daenerys Targaryen as she prepares for more bloodshed, ‘It is tempting to see your enemies as evil, but there is good and evil on both sides in every war ever fought.’ Four seasons into our journey, this is still the greatest show on earth.”

Every episode of Game of Thrones available now, Exclusively on Sky Box Sets.

Images: ©2016 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.