MERLIN Series Five Won't Ape Game Of Thrones

The BBC's sword and sorcery show may be getting darker and more grown-up, but the showrunners tell us why they're not trying to ape HBO's George RR Martin adaptation in series five.

Speaking at Comic-Con 2012, co-creator and executive producer Johnny Capps revealed, "In episodes one and two we've got the northern plains, we've got snow. We're being ambitious; each year we push the look of the show. And script wise we're telling multi-stranded stories. We needed to grow the show up a little bit."

Murphy also highlights distinctions between the production capabilities of the shows. "If you look at Game Of Thrones ... it's nearly four times our budget!" he told us. "Does it make a difference? Yes, a bit; we probably reject three or four stories a series on the grounds that we simply couldn't do it. We have to work within the world that we have. We have a budget. Our CGI capacity gets bigger which helps, so every year we put more on the screen I think. But practically there's a line in the sand that we can't go to."

Dave was once the Group Editor-in-Chief for Future's film group, but now he's the COO of Pocket Gamer and Pocket Gamer Biz. He also freelances for SFX Magazine and hosts the Robby The Robot's Waiting podcast with a couple of friends.