‘House of the Dragon’s latest shocker makes Game of Thrones look tame’

Having watched — and recently rewatched — all eight series of Game Of Thrones, I was pretty smug in the knowledge that in terms of Most Shocking TV Moments Of All Time™, HBO had already given me its best shots.

How wrong can a man be? The climax to the opening episode of the second series of the GOT prequel House Of The Dragon didn’t just simply push the envelope. It plucked it out of the air, opened it right up, dropped your pounding heart inside, and then sent it back to you, guaranteed delivery.

Of course, it involved an innocent child. If you found Stannis Baratheon allowing the Red Witch to burn his daughter Shireen at the stake in GOT a tad disturbing, then what happened to poor little Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen may well keep you awake at night for another week or two.

As with Shireen’s death it was what you didn’t see that perhaps affected you most. With Shireen it was her bewildered cries for parental aid as the flames engulfed her. With Jaehaerys it was the slaughterhouse sound effects as his head was chopped clean off, as he slept, by a pair of assassins hired by his grandad’s frankly evil brother — and this show’s best character — Daemon (Matt Smith).

Now, I know some of us watch these programmes because we like a breathtaking twist or two. And I’m fully aware that many viewers would have been more offended by the fact that one of the assassins also kicked his own dog. Surely a “that’s a little gratuitous, guys” line has to be drawn somewhere though?

That said, I had to laugh when, in the very next episode Jaehearys’s great grandfather Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) told his grieving grandmother Alicent (Olivia Cooke): “We mustn’t be shaken by this…this…act.” Er, okay Otto. Thanks for the advice. Whatever you say, mate.

And it gets even darker. Spoiler agreements dictate that I cannot tell you how dark — although if you don’t think of Chucky from Child’s Play without his cover-up make-up at least once during the second episode I’ll want to know why.

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It does make me wonder why HBO decided to go for the full shock value on this one. (By the way, yes I am aware that what happened in the book was way more twisted.)

The simple answer is that the producers were desperately trying to jump a few steps ahead in the game of catch-up they’ve been playing ever since this spin-off programme was first announced. A waste of effort if you ask me. Let’s be honest, no matter how much they try to outgross GOT they will not escape the elephant in the room.

Namely? House Of The Dragon will never eclipse — or even equal — the impact of Game Of Thrones.

That’s not to say it isn’t a hugely watchable TV programme in its own right, or that we are not massively indebted to HBO for even attempting to fill the hole in the first place.

However, I think that opening the first episode of this second run with a trip to the Wall and Winterfell was a huge mistake — and that’s before we even discuss that Stark lad’s comedy mash-up of the accents of Ned Stark and Jon Snow.

As lovely as it was to see those legendary outposts (and the ravens), the visits to the Seven Kingdoms’ snowiest lands just reminded me of what we are missing. In turn that had me wondering what was happening in all the other far flung places that GOT, with its epic scale, took us to over the years.

That might make me seem a little ungrateful. I might even look a little dumb for bemoaning the fact that a spin-off show featuring mainly one family from GOT, erm, features mainly one family from GOT. That doesn’t make that fact any less true/painful though.

I apologise for reducing HOTD to a soap about the squabblings and bickerings of a dysfunctional family, but at times it can feel a bit like Dallas with dragons. Similarly, unfair as it may be to point out that HOTD suffers from the same affliction that dogs every prequel ever made — we know what’s going to happen — you cannot deny that it has an impact.

While it can be fun for the viewer to reenact the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing GIF each week, you can only keep the “Yes, but we get to see HOW it all happened” argument going for so long — as The Crown eventually discovered to its cost.

Luckily, we haven’t reached that point in HOTD yet. And if I’m being completely honest, as long as it has Matt Smith and the dragons in it I’ll keep watching. I suggest you do likewise. There’s a war coming and it promises to be epic.

I mean, it probably won’t be as epic as The Battle Of The Bastards, or The Long Night, or The Bells.

But, hey, beggars and choosers and all that.

House of the Dragon airs weekly on Sky Atlantic, and is streaming on NOW with a Sky Entertainment Membership.