Game of Thrones, season 4

Joffrey's wedding is the rare mercy the show grants quickly: poisoned at his own feast, purple-faced, dead in his mother's arms - and Tyrion, who handed him the cup, is charged with it. The trial is a theatre of old grudges, and Tyrion detonates it with the truest speech of the series before demanding combat. His champion is Oberyn Martell, in King's Landing for revenge on the Mountain; the duel is won right up until it is catastrophically not.

What follows is the family's real collapse. Jaime frees his brother. Tyrion, on his way out, detours through his father's chambers, finds Shae in the bed, and finishes with a crossbow in the privy. Tywin Lannister, the most competent man in the story, dies on a toilet, and the realm he held together starts sliding.

At the Wall, the wildling army arrives and the Watch holds it at terrible cost - giants at the gate, a scythe on the ice - until Stannis, of all people, appears out of the fog with cavalry and ends it. Daenerys learns ruling is harder than conquering as Meereen curdles; her dragons kill a child, and she chains the two she can catch.

Arya leaves Westeros with an iron coin. The Hound is left on a hillside, begging for the gift, and does not receive it.