Game of Thrones, S05E02 - TV review: A return to form with dragons, Dorne and intrigue

Where are the Sand Snakes? We’ve been promised three new ass-kicking warrior beauties in the form of Prince Oberyn Martell’s daughters, but two episodes in and the hotly anticipated new characters are yet to make an appearance. Instead, and as some consolation, we get our first glimpse of Oberyn the Red Viper’s homeland of Dorne and see his lover Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) giving her king a poisonous earful, lisping her lines to ssssoound as ssssssnakey as posssssible .

Proceedings in series 5 appear to have moved firmly away from King’s Landing to other corners of the Seven Kingdoms as Meereen (in Slaver's Bay), Dorne (the southern-most part of Westeros) and Braavos (on the continent Essos) take centre stage. With the geographical shift comes a return to form following last week’s disappointing season premiere. The second episode is so dizzyingly full of intrigue and surprises that creators D. B. Weiss and David Benioff have clearly regained their stride with George RR Martin’s fantasy tale.

But we spend long enough in King’s Landing to witness Cersei Lannister (a brilliantly frosty Lena Headey) fend off misogynistic outrage at her attempts to assume power on behalf of her son. Her dead daddy’s twin brother, Kevan Lannister (Ian Gelder), shouts the loudest at her impertinence: “You are the Queen mother, nothing more.” She also manages, in the 4 minutes of air time she is awarded this week, to despatch her own twin-come-one-handed-incestuous lover Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) on a mission to retrieve their only daughter, Myrcella, from Dorne, which sounds promising for next week, particularly as he’s recruited Bronn (Jerome Flynn) to be his, er, right hand man.

Meanwhile in Meereen “mhysa” of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) learns more about her father the Mad King and has her own brush with revolting peasants after the murder of a Son of the Harpy leads her to choose justice over mercy – and lose her benign reputation in the process. I may have been the only one pleased to see the unrest as ever since Dany has been ruling from that pyramid she’s been far less interesting. Although, with Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) currently residing in an only moderately plusher box than last week’s journeying to pledge allegiance to her, let’s hope Dany sticks around long enough to meet him.

Last week’s episode was notable for its near total lack of Stark offspring and this week we see two: Arya (Maisie Williams) arrives in Braavos and treats us to the most boring element of the programme as she sits huffily outside the House of Black and White which doesn’t appear to contain Jaqen H'ghar of the changeable appearance and murderous ways. Or does it? Meanwhile Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) has adopted a surly sarcasm befitting of the teenage rebellion her new look and affair with Littlefinger suggest. She’s in no mood to be rescued by the heroic Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and seems distracted by the sinister Petyr Baelish’s (Aiden Gillen) admission that his proposal had been accepted. To whom exactly, we wonder?

On the unofficial Stark offspring front we have Jon Snow who, shock horror, is yet again forced to consider the vow he made to the Night’s Watch when Stannis Baratheon offers to overturn his bastardy and award him the Stark surname in return for helping him build power in the North. But the Maester appears to have other ideas for Jon and he casts the deciding vote in a ballot to pick him as the new Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. The older men in the big furry jackets did not look best pleased but it was cheering to see how many soldiers were left in the guard as I’d thought most of them wiped out at the end of last series.

More than ever the power play seems to be completely wide open. My money might have been on Dany but with her many children/subjects losing their delirious devotion for her and Jon Snow fast becoming a serious, and more impressive, successor to Rob Stark as king of the North. Not to mention Cersei and Stannis’s conflicting yet equally pathetic grasping at power and the many many many distracting concerns that everyone else is tied up with. I’m still gunning for Tyrion (hideously underused so far this season) to ride into Meereen in his box and start pulling strings. Only then may we see how far the tentacles of subversive power can stretch across the Narrow Sea. And where are those Sand Snakes. Sssurely it’sss time?