Alright, alright, so you've probably heard by now that the eighth and final series of Game of thrones is kicking off in just over a week. However, whilst we know it is the biggest show on the Tv, the scale of how big it is might be surprising to you.

If estimates are correct, around one billion people could be tuning in to each of the six episodes in the last ever season. That's a huge percentage of the population of the globe to be watching a telly programme.

Basically, it's being shown in 170 different countries, starting in the UK on 15 April, and it looks as if pretty much everyone around the world is excited to see the final set of twists and turns that will establish once and for all who in Westeros will control the seven kingdoms.

If the last season is anything to go by, the records are set to tumble once again.

At the end of the last season, the seventh series finale - entitled The Dragon and the Wolf - was watched by 16.5 million people in the United States alone.

That means that a huge audience of people around the globe saw the dreaded ice dragon melting down the wall (exactly how ice melts ice isn't yet clear) and breaching into the north of Westeros at long last.

Credit: HBO

That was a significant increase on the previous season, which drew an audience of 8.9 million when it was aired live.

All the best guesses point to this season being potentially the biggest event in television history. We've been promised the biggest battle ever seen, and they usually deliver.

Chief critic at Rolling Stone magazine Alan Sepinwall has tried to explain the success of the show. He said: "It's viscerally thrilling in a way that almost nothing in TV has ever been before.

"It does things you never expect TV to be able to do in terms of dragons flying and burning up entire armies and zombies storming down a mountain.

"When Game of Thrones debuted, back in 2017, TV was a totally different place. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon hadn't begun to create their own programming, and the audience for great shows wasn't splintered across niche genres and formats.

"It was actually possible and enjoyable to keep up with Game of Thrones and other great shows like Homeland, Breaking Bad and Mad Men as they unfolded week by week."

Credit: HBO

Sepinwall continued: "Now dozens of original shows, documentaries and mini-series are dumped on to streaming services every month and even the best of them reach much smaller, fragmented audiences."

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