[mercer]

Agreed. The writing can be downright terrible at times, and it's usually when they deviate from the source material.

I've noticed something similar with Westworld. I love the premise, and I'm a huge fan of Anthony Hopkins in particular. But the writing just feels so bad most of the time. I don't think it's a coincidence that the best scenes involve Hopkins, and what makes them good is not primarily the dialogue.

It's really... jarring to be watching something that clearly cost a lot of money to produce, involved a lot of very skilled people, and yet manages to be absolutely atrocious when it comes to dialogue or plot. It always makes me wonder how the showrunners managed to get the gig.

Both Westworld and GoT are HBO shows, so maybe that has something to do with it. While I do enjoy both shows, it's more for the cultural buy-in and the budgets involved. The writing pales in comparison to that of many other shows on other channels (FX being my favorite, followed by perhaps AMC)

(Incidentally, this is something I've been confused about for a while. How was Moffat allowed to ruin Doctor Who so utterly over multiple seasons? How did Braga/Berman get to be showrunners for Enterprise when at least one of them (don't remember which) was generally disliked for his contributions to earlier seasons?)

[qubex]

I'm curious to see what will come of Westworld now that Hopkins' character is (apparently?) out.

As for quality of material, I don't know whether to list Mr Robot as an example of good writing or not. It's got good dialogue (and accurate hacking scenes!) but overall the plot seems to be borderline-ludicrous and the Anonymous/Occupy Wall Street ”stick-it-to-the-man” objective seems so... puerile?