‘House of the Dragon’ review — orgies, gore and family feuds in ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel

When HBO announced that it would be making a spin-off of Game of Thrones, there was understandable apprehension. Rare is the network that can resist milking a hit series for every last drop, even if it risks tainting its legacy. Game of Thrones had its flaws, but it remains the mother of all fantasy epics, a budget-busting, awards-festooned blockbuster that heralded an era of television vast in scale and reach.

Now comes House of the Dragon, a prequel based on George RR Martin’s 2018 novel Fire & Blood, set 170 years before the events depicted in Game of Thrones. When the latter came out, TV fantasy dramas were few and far between; now you can’t move for world-building sword-and-sorcery epics trying to repeat the formula.

Among these are Sky’s Britannia (mildewed mystics in ancient Britain), Netflix’s The Witcher (monsters vs Henry Cavill) and Amazon’s The Wheel of Time (Rosamund Pike in a wig), the last of which was reportedly commissioned at the behest of Jeff Bezos with the express purpose of filling the hole left by Game of Thrones. Next month comes another Amazon series, Lord of the Rings spin-off The Rings of Power, the rights to which alone cost £250mn.

The biggest challenge facing House of the Dragon, then, will be standing out in a bigger, more fragmented market and overcoming the inertia of an audience that has potentially had its fill of magic, monsters and ugly great thrones. Can a new fantasy series hope to pull in the viewer numbers that Game of Thrones did at its peak (the final episode in 2019 drew 19.3mn), even if it is a blood relation? The answer is probably not. The best any new show can do is create a world that viewers will want to spend time in and, on this front, House of the Dragon emphatically succeeds.

If there is one thing missing, it’s levity. ‘Game of Thrones’ always knew when to deliver a spicy one-liner to burst the bubble of portent

Set when the Targaryen dynasty still ruled the Seven Kingdoms, the series opens in King’s Landing, last seen being incinerated by Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon in the Game of Thrones finale. Here the ruling monarch is King Viserys I (Paddy Considine), grandson and nominated successor of Old King Jaehaerys. That Viserys’s cousin Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best) was passed over is one of several historical grudges that may come back to haunt him, not least since her husband owns the largest navy in Westeros.

In any case, a decade into his reign and in poor health, Viserys is under pressure to name a successor of his own. Being a girl, his dragon-rider daughter Rhaenyra (played in early episodes by Milly Alcock) apparently won’t do. But — mild spoiler incoming — his hopes of producing a male heir are dashed when his wife dies in one of the most gruesome childbirth scenes I’ve witnessed on screen. Viserys’s brother, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), considers himself next in line, though the King’s Hand, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), sets his own plans in motion when he sends his daughter to comfort the king in his hour of grief.

Time passes quickly in this first season — too fast at times, with assorted marriages, births and deaths creating new alliances and catastrophic rifts. The frailer the king gets, the more those close to him must secure their interests in readiness for the hell that will break loose when he expires.

If there’s a familiarity to all this manoeuvring over successors, it’s no accident. Co-showrunner Ryan Condal has said that one of his prime sources of inspiration was HBO’s other mega-hit Succession, in which super-rich siblings take turns sabotaging one another as they seek to take control of the family business. Not that Viserys has much in common with Succession’s potty-mouthed patriarch Logan Roy, who makes a sport of playing his children off against one another. By contrast, Viserys is a benevolent king whose aversion to conflict has grave geopolitical implications, leaving the crown vulnerable to warmongers and usurpers.

It’s significant that House of the Dragon is narrower in focus than Game of Thrones — a mercy, given the bloated nature of the latter as it struggled to maintain multiple story arcs. Where Game of Thrones was about rival dynasties clashing to take control of the Seven Kingdoms, the divisions in House of the Dragon are confined to a single family. (Those with an eye on Westeros history will be au fait with House Targaryen’s inbreeding, a deliberate move to keep the bloodlines pure, which accounts for the startling white-blond hair of its members and their predisposition to insanity.)

Within this one dynasty, we get the full panoply of heroes and villains, the tensions in their relationships proving deliciously compelling. Chief among the scoundrels is Matt Smith’s Daemon, a man who regards an orgy as the ideal way to toast the arrival of a baby nephew. While the graphic sexual violence that was a marker of Game of Thrones’ early seasons is largely absent, there is no shortage of sex, with the most debauched scenes reserved for Daemon. For those who know Smith primarily from Dr Who, this may be something of a mental leap; in one scene, only a gauzy scarf stands between us and the good Doctor’s penis.

It’s to be expected in this era of bottomless budgets and superior CGI that House of the Dragon looks magnificent, from the grand aerial shots and sumptuous feasts to the close-ups of dragons as they are coaxed from their pits.

If there is one thing missing — at least from the six episodes available to reviewers — it’s levity. Game of Thrones always knew when to deliver a spicy one-liner to burst the bubble of portent and pomposity, but there’s precious little humour here — another byproduct, perhaps, of the narrow Targaryen gene pool. Nonetheless, in keeping the storytelling streamlined, there is an emotional heft that was often lacking in its predecessor, which preferred to batter us with spectacle.

It will no doubt irk the makers of House of the Dragon to be so relentlessly compared to its parent series. The hope will be that it will exist as a distinct entity and stand purely on its own merits. Right now it’s early days, but the augurs are good. As we await news of that other back-stabbing clan, the Roys, this will do nicely.

★★★★☆

Premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21 in the US and available from August 22 on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK

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