Just finished watching it. It was... well done. Quite decent, actually, but I fear I had my hopes a little too high. The adaption is really good, the characters are well casted and did a good job, all of them. What didn't really ride with me was the way some of the scenes were shortened in comparison to the books (the one where they find the wolves, for example, or the one with Bran an Jaime Lannister in the end). I know, they can't convert the book into a series without making some cutbacks, but still, I would have liked it if they had stayed closer to the books. Then again, I know the books by heart and could probably give you a detailed time-line of all the events since before Robert's Rebellion from memory.
Another thing I didn't quite like was the magnitude of certain things. In the books, the Dothraki wedding is a ginormous thing with all 40.000 riders present, and that really didn't come across in the series (imho). Also, I'm a little concerned about certain... events that will force them to have computer animations interacting with real people (
Dragons, maybe the Others, maybe the Wildfire). I'm curious how well that will be done.
All in all, I have to say I enjoyed the first episode, I am looking forward to the next one, and I encourage everyone to read the books, because they are freaking awesome and even better than the series. The best fiction books I ever read.
One last remark, in favour of the TV show: all that nudity works a little better on screen as it does on a book page.
"Yet again it is demonstrated that monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents."
- Christopher Hitchens