The latest spin-off from the fantasy hit tells the story of an inexperienced knight and his cheeky squire. With its mix of brutal drama and plentiful humour, it's a "nailed-on winner".

Game of Thrones? Brilliant, until some of the later episodes. House of the Dragon? Good, without ever reaching the heights of its predecessor. Broadly speaking, that's how fans feel about the first two shows set in Westeros, the high-fantasy creation of novelist George RR Martin. Now here comes the eagerly awaited third, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. How does it compare? It's a total delight from start to finish. We haven't had this much fun in Westeros for a long time – maybe ever.

The titular knight is Ser Duncan. Cast your mind back to the first episode of the fourth season of Thrones. There's a brief scene in which the loathsome Joffrey is flicking through the Book of Brothers, the huge tome recording the great deeds of all of the Kingsguards, a cadre of elite royal bodyguards. "Ser Duncan the Tall," Joffrey says, coming across an unusually long entry. "Four pages for Ser Duncan. He must have been quite a man."

Quite a man indeed, but he's a long way from being a Kingsguard in this, his origin story. We're roughly in the middle of the two centuries separating Dragon and Thrones. Episode one opens with Ser Duncan (Peter Claffey), also known as Dunk, burying Ser Arlan, the old hedge knight for whom he had squired. A "hedge knight" is a knight not pledged to one of the great houses; a free lance (the term originally referred to medieval soldiers for hire). Ser Arlan had few possessions and no coin (although he was… ahem… well-endowed in other ways, as a brief biographical montage shows), but he cleaved to the ideals of chivalry and instilled in Ser Duncan the desire to be a good knight.