And yet Graham Henry's Lions took a gripping, thrilling series to the very last line-out.
They make readers question our own society – political power, the twin threats of despotism and terrorism, mass communications, torture – but above all they're gripping, thrilling, hurtling stories in which the brilliant ideas serve a great plot and strong characters, rather than the other way around.
In The Wire, The Corner and Generation Kill, Simon and co conjured up gripping, thrilling characters often from nothing more than a few lines of dialogue, characters for whom the viewer came to care as if they were friends or relatives.
Of course the story remains as gripping and thrilling as ever but, you know what?
There have been musicals tackling political scandal (Andrew Lloyd Webber's Stephen Ward), capitalism and corporate greed (Urinetown, where toilets are privatised) and the National Theatre's gripping and thrilling London Road, based on interviews with residents of the area in Ipswich where a serial killer preyed on prostitutes.
It's a gripping, pulse-quickening thrill ride with astounding 3D visuals.
This encounter between old foes was thrilling, gripping and as intense as ever.
Mantel became the first novelist to win both the Man Booker and the Costa prize when a nine-strong judging panel took less than an hour to decide that her thrilling, gripping and bloody second instalment of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy was a clear winner.
The basic tension of whether the questioned (and, in some cases, the questioners) are telling the truth underlies a duel which in what is said and not said, and how it is spoken or withheld, becomes thrilling and gripping.
The story told in Robert Kurson's new book features undersea thrills, a gripping mystery, incredible discoveries, true-blue friendship, life-or-death crises and history unfolding before the reader's eyes.
