Karl Puschmann: House of the Dragon plays a gratuitous game

Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen in The House of the Dragon, on Soho and streaming on Neon.

In the lead-up to Monday's launch, the hype for House of the Dragon had set the pop culture landscape ablaze like a giant flying lizard had swooped down from above and burped out a scorching breath of fire.

Before it'd even started the series had cast a huge dragon shaped shadow across the land, quite literally at the All Blacks vs Ireland game at Wellington's Sky Stadium last month when fire spewed from the roof top and a dragon's shadow soared over the pitch at halftime to a cacophony of roars and dropped jaws from the tens of thousands of assembled sports fans.

Everywhere you looked you either saw ads for the show or comment about the show. It often felt like there was nowhere to hide from its white hot touch. But, given its lineage this has felt warranted.

House of the Dragon which is on Sky's Soho channel and streaming on Neon, is the prequel to the global phenomenon that was Game of Thrones. This has turned out to be something of a mixed blessing and not the privileged slam dunk of mass approval that you'd expect to greet a series following up on one of the biggest television shows of the last decade.

On the positive side, without that show, we wouldn't have this show. Where it gets thorny however is that just like a power-crazed princess riding atop a mythical beast Game of Thrones burnt down all of its hard-earned goodwill and audience currency with its terrible final season. A less than auspicious ending to a series that for years had made a solid claim to enter the hallowed realm of the TV greats.

This has seen House of the Dragon lumbered with two big problems. Living up to the success of its predecessor is simply not enough. Being showered with critical acclaim isn't either. The series has the nearly impossible task of having to do both of those things as well as enticing back the hordes of casual Thrones fans that made GoT such a success but are harbouring begrudging and longheld disappointment at how it all wrapped up.

Good luck to them. GoT was lightening in a bottle. A show about magic and dragons that appealed to millions of people who traditionally have had no interest in those things.

Really, GoT was a bit of a bait and switch. It lured you in with intriguing political manoeuvrings, malevolent scheming and audacious power plays as the various houses of the realm competed in the game to win the ultimate prize of the throne. Dragons and magic and snow zombies and all that guff came later and by that point you were already sucked in.

So the stakes were sky high for Monday night's debut episode of House of the Dragon. Could it deliver everything people loved about its predecessor and retain a sense of familiarity while still being its own exciting new thing?

And more importantly, is there still a place for a show like this in 2022 or has the world simply moved on?

The latter can't be answered on the basis of just one episode. But after watching on Monday it's safe to that this house is certainly built on the foundations of politics, sex and violence with which GoT first captured people's attention. It's almost gratuitously adult in its attention-grabbing with plenty of naked bits and bodies bouncing and dangling around and bloodied scenes of terrible violence that can leave you feeling rather squeamish.

Obviously, a single hour in this early Westeros is not enough time to pass too many judgements or form bonds with any of the characters, especially as this series opener is mostly concerned with getting its various pieces into play rather than letting you spend too much time with any one figure. Although, somewhat predictably, Matt Smith is an early standout as the golden-haired, villainous figure Prince Daemon Targaryen.

Just like GoT the show's lowbrow titillation has had a thick layer of prestige coated over the top. It's easy to tell money has been spent. Everything from the sets, to the costumes, to the music, to the acting is extremely well done. It feels quality and perhaps most of important of all is that yes, it does feels like Game of Thrones before it went downhill.

But will that be enough?

House of the Dragon is certainly working hard to get you in the door. Episode one opens with many bangs and features at least three scenes guaranteed to get you chatting about the show in one way or another. No one can say it isn't delivering the Game of Thrones goods.

Even with its opening episode doing everything right, the big question facing House of the Dragon is whether you can ever go home again.