Yes, there be dragons, but real power lies with the women
As much-awaited Game of Thrones prequel is launched...
Sky Atlantic from Monday ★★★★✩
THIS time, it really is all about the dragons. Fantasy addicts who championed Game Of Thrones always insisted the mythical, fire- breathing monsters were the REAL stars of the show.
The nudity, the brothel scenes, the rapes and the brutality to women – all that was a regrettable necessity imposed by the sexual excesses of writer George RR Martin’s epic novels.
Of course, this was never a very convincing defence. But now the theory is being put to the test. For there is very little medieval rumpy-pumpy in House Of The Dragon – and what there is, you’ll wish you’d never seen.
There are, however, as the title suggests, a great many 80 ft lizards with crocodile teeth and eagles’ talons. What’s more, the computer graphics are astonishingly convincing. When a dragon slinks out of its dungeon into a gladiatorial arena and flame-grills an unfortunate goat with a single roar, it’s as thrilling as any footage of lions hunting wildebeest on a real-life wildlife documentary.
But what marks out this lavish serial, conceived as a prequel to Game Of Thrones, is its radically different treatment of women. Now they hold the real power in the kingdom.
Since the last series, the #MeToo movement has transformed TV production. Instead of portraying women as frequently subservient and sex objects, House Of The Dragon has the rivalry between two powerful female aristocrats at the heart of its story.
We can guess, from the moment we see best friends Alicent and Rhaenyra together, that they will soon be at each other’s throats — and that their feud might drag their kingdom into civil war.
In the opening scene, the daughter of the king, Princess Rhaenyra (newcomer Milly Alcock), is dismounting from her dragon Syrax after an aerial tour of Westeros that proves the ambition of the filmmakers to create an entire world using CGI.
Rhaenyra’s best friend, and the daughter of her father’s chief adviser, is Lady Alicent Hightower (played first by Emily Carey, and later by Olivia Cooke, brilliant as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair).
Miss Hightower doesn’t look terribly impressed by dragoneering, which tells us all we need to know about her. Never trust a woman who doesn’t love a firebreathing cross between a dinosaur and a jumbo jet. If you baulk at those names, by the way, don’t even think of persevering.
EVEN more than the original show, this one is obsessed with the tonguetwisting minutiae of Martin’s imagination. The series is based on a 2018 chronicle called Fire & Blood, written in the style of a 1950s history textbook, with very little dialogue or description, and a preponderance of noble family trees.
The TV version evokes this by dumping information on the viewer in cartloads, often delivered in cod Shakespearean language with a great many ‘mayhaps’ and ‘mine lieges’. Rhaenyra, who is 15 at the start, is expected to wait at her father’s table, filling goblets with wine.
It’s a useful crash course for her in Targaryen politics, though it does mean Milly Alcock has little to do for the first hour except hold a wine jug and practise looking like Emilia Clarke’s twin.
Later in the series, as the princess grows up, Emma D’Arcy takes over the part.
Rhaenyra’s insipid father, King Viserys I, is played by Paddy Considine. He wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in Game Of Thrones, where even popular characters were lucky to live longer than three episodes.
House Of The Dragon has a different pace, and Viserys does survive for a while, though not entirely intact. But that doesn’t mean this show lacks a taste for blood.
Torture, mass execution and fights to the death are enacted in psychotic detail.
A jousting tournament descends into a free-for-all brawl where the camera zooms in to replay every hatchet through the skull in goresplattered slow motion. And when the City Watch, commanded by the king’s scheming brother Daemon, launches a crackdown on crime, the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy is taken to the extreme.
Petty thieves have their hands chopped off. Robbers get their heads chopped off. When a sex offender is caught, something else gets chopped off... in a clinical close-up.
This brings us to the biggest name in the series – Matt Smith, who plays Daemon in a silver wig. Smith features in both the sex scenes that punctuate early episodes. Viewers who grew up with him on Doctor Who should be warned that one shot reveals a naked Daemon, from behind.
HIS friend, whose favours he has purchased, notices his lack of enthusiasm. ‘What troubles you, my prince?’ she trills. When he turns around, careful camera angles hide the worst, though this attempt at modesty has an unlucky effect: Matt appears to have no genitalia, like Barbie’s friend Ken.
Believe me, if I could hijack a Tardis and travel back to when I hadn’t seen all that, I would.
As I say, the real stars of this series are the fire-breathing, great, galumphing, flying beasts. Fans of this lavish fantasy show will never again have to protest that they aren’t watching for the rude bits. This time, when someone insists ‘It’s the dragons I like,’ they’re probably telling the truth.
House Of The Dragon launches on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 2am and 9pm.