You don’t hear whistling in Westeros very often. The warring kings, the scheming viziers, the occasional incursion by angry dragons or ice zombies — there’s just not a whole lot to feel cheerful about in the Seven Kingdoms. It’s hard to whistle while you work when the work is a Hobbesian war of all against all, unless you’re being a real Joffrey about it.

But in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the new HBO show set in the same world as “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon,” there’s whistling on the soundtrack. Lots of it, in fact. Jaunty, carefree whistling, atop a bed of folksy acoustic guitar. The work that composer Dan Romer does here is a world removed from the dramatic, swirling score provided by Ramin Djawadi for this show’s predecessors. Only once does the music hint at that familiar, rousing theme song … and it is immediately cut off by a shot of the show’s hero violently moving his bowels.

In other words, you can literally hear that this is a different kind of show than the previous Westerosi epics. (The episodes are near-sitcom shortness, too.) “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is adapted from the author George R.R. Martin’s novella “The Hedge Knight,” a far more compact and straightforward story of bravery and villainy than his epic “A Song of Ice and Fire” series of novels. Ira Parker, who created the series with Martin and oversees it as showrunner, is not telling a story that determines the fate of nations or the future of humanity in this fantasy world. (Not so far, anyway.) No wonder the music sounds less like “The Lord of the Rings” and more like “Harold and Maude.”

I reviewed the series premiere of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for the New York Times. Always great to be back on the Westeros beat, especially now that maybe my most beloved character in the setting is on deck. (Gift link!)

It’s the second Boiled Leather podcast to drop today! In the latest installment of our Best of ASOIAF series, Stefan and I take a look at the inspiration for next month’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “The Hedge Knight” — available here or wherever you get your podcasts!