House of the Dragon Review

The first season's boldest choice is also its most costly: it covers roughly twenty years, jumping forward twice and recasting its two central women midway, which means the audience must fall in love with four actors instead of two. It works better than it should because Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke are excellent, and because the show is genuinely interested in how a friendship between two girls becomes a dynastic war neither of them wants.

Matt Smith is having a wonderful time. Paddy Considine's dying king, a decent man destroying his family through indecision, is the best performance in the whole franchise. The dragons finally look like animals rather than effects, and the birth scenes are the most harrowing material the network has aired. The second season is the issue. It is a table setting exercise in which councils meet, envoys travel and almost nothing is decided, ending on a stalemate, and the promised battles are deferred. The gloom of the photography is also, at times, literally too dark to follow.