‘Game of Thrones’ season 5: See the roster of (mostly new) directors

How is this for a surprise? Despite being what we would figure to be one of the most-coveted TV shows for directors out there, “Game of Thrones” will have a completely new roster for season 5 than they did for season 4. As a matter of fact, there will only be one director on the show next season with any prior experience with the series.

It’s no surprise to us that Neil Marshall is not coming back (given that he mostly called on just for the big battle episodes), but we are reasonably surprised about the lack of Michelle McLaren (probably our favorite all-around director on TV right now) or Alex Graves (who did some great work, even if he did face criticism for that Jaime – Cersei “rape” scene early in season 4). The one returning director is David Nutter, the genius behind “The Rains of Castamere,” who will be taking on the last two episodes of this coming season. Per Entertainment Weekly, take a look at the full roster below.

• Episodes 5×01 and 5×02 will be helmed by Michael Slovis, who is certainly accomplished thanks to his work on “Breaking Bad.” He was behind the wonderful episode “Confessionals” and worked in cinematography through much of the series.
• Episodes 5×03 and 5×04 will be done by Mark Mylod, a more surprising choice given that a good bit of his TV work is in comedy. “Shameless” is technically classified as a comedy per the Emmys this year, but we still think of it mostly as a drama.
• Episodes 5×05 and 5×06 will be done by Jeremy Podeswa, an inspired choice thanks to his work on period shows like “The Tudors” and “Boardwalk Empire.”
• Episodes 5×07 and 5×08 will be helmed by Miguel Sapochnik, who has the genre cred thanks to “Fringe.”

Since we haven’t seen the work of any of these individuals on “Game of Thrones” itself, we’ll reserve our final judgment until the show returns next spring.

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Photo: HBO