The location shots are beautiful and lush, and the strong cast includes familiar veterans along with some greatly talented relative newcomers.
We’ve just finished celebrating the finale of one of the great spinoff series of all time in “Better Call Saul,” and now the gods of television once again smile upon us with another potentially memorable prequel: HBO’s “Game of Thrones” precursor “House of the Dragon,” which gets off to bloody good start in the first six episodes and holds the promise of becoming must-see Sunday night TV.
It’s going to take a while to recognize all the new players without a scorecard (which is why we’ve provided a scorecard—see sidebar below) but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to have to worry about a time-jumping storyline in “Dragon” à la “Saul.” Jamie and Cersei Lannister, Arya and Sansa Stark, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen—their exploits lie ahead, in the distant future. As we’re told in the series premiere, we are in …
THE NINTH YEAR OF THE KING VISERYS I TARGARYEN’S REIGN.
172 YEARS BEFORE THE DEATH OF THE MAD KING, AERYS, AND THE BIRTH OF HIS DAUGHTER, PRINCESS DAENERYS TARGARYEN.
A series premiering at 8 p.m. Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, with a new episode premiering each Sunday through Oct. 23.
Got it? Good! Now off we go on a spectacularly entertaining adventure, with showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik (who directed a number of “GOT” episodes, including the Emmy-winning “Battle of the Bastards”) bringing to vibrant life the characters and events created by George R.R. Martin in his dense and sprawling 2018 book “Fire & Blood.”
With each episode clocking in at approximately one hour, “House of the Dragon” features Emmy-worthy production design in the interior sets at Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios in Watford, England, and beautiful and lush location shots in Cáceres and Trujillo, Spain; Monsanto and Penha Garcia, Portugal, and Cornwall, Surrey and Derbyshire, England, among other spots.
With quality direction and cinematography, strong writing that combines political intrigue, family melodramatics and some impressively nasty twists and turns, and powerful performances from a cast that includes a number of familiar and well-decorated and mostly British veterans along with some greatly talented relative newcomers, “House of the Dragon” has the gravitas and visceral gut-punch effectiveness of a series that could be with us for a very long time. (The score from Ramin Djawadi, who did “GOT” as well as “Westworld,” is also nomination-level great.)
Will it ever match the pop-culture zeitgeist heights of “Game of Thrones?” Will any series ever do that? “Dragon” is filled with fantastic callbacks, e.
