The highly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel didn’t disappoint when “the biggest show in the world” dropped on Monday.
Set in the Westeros year 101, almost 200 years before GoT, HBO’s House of the Dragon is certainly in keeping with the original series.
Beheadings, mutilations, conspiracies, orgies and tragedy in a bloody, fatal childbirth scene anchor the storylines of the Targaryen dynasty at the height of its power.
And that’s all within 30 minutes of episode one.
As expected, Australian rising star Milly Alcock took centre stage when it played to a Foxtel/Binge audience in Australia and the United States right on 11am.
Alcock (as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, the first-born child of King Viserys Targaryen) is ever-present in the next nine episodes, as we see her appointed heir to the throne by her father (Paddy Considine), the King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.
Social media lit up like dragon fire with reactions to the debut, with “they got me again, I’m all in” and “I’m back, baby” summing up the mood.
“Gotta give more credit to Rhaenyra and Daemon [former Doctor Who Matt Smith] speaking High Valyrian, cuz the throne scene is absolute gold,” referring to Alcock’s ability to speak the fictitious, ancient language and whisper the iconic word “dracarys” in a pivotal scene towards the end of the first episode.
However, not every fan was even able to offer up first bites, after 3000 HBO subscribers who used an app to download the show were left with an intermittent broadcast.
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“Would be even better if app didn’t crash as soon as tried to watch it. Everything else on the app works fine but House of the Dragon. Watching on Amazon fire stick and have already reset multiple times,” wrote one angry fan.
In a statement, HBO responded: “House of the Dragon is being successfully viewed by millions of HBO Max subscribers this evening.
“We’re aware of a small portion of users attempting to connect via Fire TV devices that are having issues and are in the process of resolving for those impacted users.”
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‘A very different beast’
House of Dragon has a very different visual appeal to GoT, not least because the prequel is set hundreds of years before the hugely successful eight-series – and 73 episode – fantasy sensation.
Director Miguel Sapochnik told Den of Geek: “This is one thing we changed from the outset.
“We wanted to avoid having that tint that the original show had, which differentiated where you were … we wanted to do stuff [differently] in art direction and the costume design, and it was kind of all in-camera, and therefore it got a lot more colourful.”
Putting aside the tension of a violent jousting tournament a complicated breech birth, there’s loads of blue gowns, red tunics, gold cloaks, suggesting more colour and light than GoT.
“I think we kept talking about opulence and decadence when we were world-building,” Sapochnik explained.
Setting the scene
Meanwhile, in an HBO online discussion, Mr Sapochnik and writer Ryan Condal break down some of the key moments in the first episode because the original had been off the air for so long, especially the opening scene with the Great Council, and the aforementioned tournament.
“To ground people in the new world, we needed an epic opening that would give people footing to understand where they were and I kept coming back to the Great Council,” Condal said.
“It was this really substantial event that had happened before our time and set in motion a lot of things we were going to see throughout the course of our story.”
The tournament is jousting at its best, and worst, as horses and riders are slaughtered mid-action as the royal balcony looks on.
In a palace back room, surrounded by fretting midwives and a scared mother unable to give birth, there is also much bloodshed.
Adds Mr Saposchnik: “I knew I needed to do a sequence in the first episode that gave a nod towards what was capable on this show … and a tournament was something that was exciting.”
“If you’re going to put that kind of violence on the screen, it has to be for a reason,” he said.
“And with the birthing, it was the same, we wanted to see the female perspective because it was a realistic portrayal of what used to happen at the hands of men to women, because the 50/50 chance of surviving a birth in those times is not good odds.”
