Ira Parker writes fantasy from the ground, through one character who does not understand the world he has walked into. On A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms that gives him a friendship worth following; it has not yet given him enough for the friendship to do.
Fi1m perspective
Ira Parker's habit is to keep the camera at the height of one person who does not know very much. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026) that person is Dunk, a large, unpolished knight walking into a world full of people who have done this before, and we see only what he sees. Parker has said of him, "He’s walking into Madison Square Garden to play for the Knicks tonight and he’s never played before," and the series is built on exactly that: a big world, a small view of it, and the comedy and fright of the gap between them.
He came to it slowly. He wrote and produced on Rogue (2014–2016), created the one-season Canadian comedy-drama Four in the Morning (2016), then worked on The Last Ship (2016–2018) and on seasons three and four of Better Things (2019–2020). Our review of Better Things gave it an 84 and did not mention him, which is fair; on that series Pamela Adlon's hand is on everything and we would not pretend to pick out his. From there he joined the first season of House of the Dragon (2022) as writer and co-executive producer, under showrunner Ryan Condal, and wrote its fourth episode, "King of the Narrow Sea". A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which he created with George R.R. Martin, is his first series as showrunner on this scale.
It is a good series that could be a better one. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell are the reason to watch: two people who have to accommodate each other, and are funny while they do it. We enjoyed their company more than we expected to, and we were tired of the bodily-fluid jokes a good while before the writers were. Parker and his writers seem to know the pair are already funny and not quite to trust it, so Dunk is made ridiculous again and again to prove a point the casting made in the first ten minutes. The story also stretches thin, and there are stretches where the series has less to do than time to do it in.
What Parker does well is real and not common. He puts a joke next to a hard scene without the joke undoing the scene, and he writes a hero who is allowed to be slow, embarrassed and out of his depth. What he has not shown yet is the discipline to leave a good thing alone. The next season will tell us whether the coarseness was a nervous first-series habit or the plan. We hope it was the habit, because the two men at the middle of it deserve better material than a running gag about what comes out of them.
Biography
Ira Parker is a Canadian screenwriter and producer. He is co-creator and showrunner of the HBO series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026–), which he developed with George R. R. Martin.
Parker began his career writing on Canadian series including Rogue (2014–2016) and creating Four in the Morning (2016). He later contributed as a writer and producer to The Last Ship (2016–2018), Better Things (2019–2020) and The Nevers (2023). His work on the first season of House of the Dragon (2022) included writing the episode “King of the Narrow Sea”. He studied commerce at the University of Toronto and screenwriting at Chapman University.
