Game of Thrones, season 3

Robb Stark is undefeated in the field and losing everything else - the Karstarks over an execution, the Freys over a broken marriage pact, his own cause over the arithmetic of it. The season walks him, his mother and his bannermen into Walder Frey's hall under guest right, and then plays the Rains of Castamere. The massacre - Robb, Catelyn, the army, the direwolf - is the series' defining act of violence, and it is a Lannister instrument wielded through smaller men.

Jaime Lannister, meanwhile, is marched across the country by Brienne of Tarth and remade: a hand taken by a saw, a truth told in a bathhouse about the king he killed and why, a bear pit he goes back into. It is the show's best redemption arc, running quietly under its worst year.

Daenerys arrives in Slaver's Bay and stops being a survivor. Astapor sells her its Unsullied army and she pays with a dragon that does not stay sold; Yunkai falls to three men and a sortie. The season ends with her crowd-surfing on the word 'mother'.

Jon runs with the wildlings, loves one of them, and betrays them back to his post with three arrows in him. And at the Twins, the Hound turns away with Arya, who has begun a list.