Games just beginning
The hit television show Game of Thrones has been renewed for two more seasons, just days after season four opened with a bang that crashed the US broadcaster's online app.
Sunday's fourth season debut drew 6.6 million viewers in the US, the most for the HBO pay channel since the finale of cult hit The Sopranos was watched by 11.9 million people in 2007.
In Australia, the show attracted 273,000 viewers in two sittings on Foxtel's Showcase channel on Monday and an additional 42,000 on the Showcase+2 channel, more viewers on its first day than any other series in Foxtel history .
"Game of Thrones is a phenomenon like no other," said HBO programming boss *Michael Lombardo *, announcing that HBO had renewed it for a fifth and sixth season.
Since its debut in 2011, the HBO drama based on *George R.R. Martin *'s best-selling novels about a struggle for power between feuding clans in seven mythical kingdoms has won a devoted global fan base - US President * Barack Obama *reportedly among them - to establish itself as the star of the US cable channel's stable.
The series, starring *Emilia Clarke *, left, has wowed critics with its densely layered plot, lavish production values and a readiness to kill off, invariably in gruesome fashion, protagonists who had hitherto seemed integral to the show.
