House of the Dragon, review: all the potent ingredients of Game of Thrones – but without the humour

House of the Dragon, HBO’s $20m-an-episode follow-up to Game of Thrones, is a prequel rather than a sequel. On the makers’ part, this is an understandable decision. After seven seasons of stupendously exhilarating fantasy drama, Game of Thrones ended with a dismally ham-fisted eighth. So at the very least, I suppose, a prequel enables HBO to go back to a time before they ruined it.

The new series starts on Monday on Sky Atlantic and NOW, and it is worth noting that it has a different set of creative chiefs from Game of Thrones, although one of them, Miguel Sapochnik, directed some of Thrones’s finest instalments. House of the Dragon will consist of 10 weekly episodes, and reviewers have been shown the first six. If you’re desperate to avoid spoilers, don’t worry – I’m not about to let slip any twists or plot lines. As far as the action is concerned, all I’ll say is that it takes place almost 200 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, the “Mother of Dragons” from Game of Thrones, and that it begins with one of her ancestors (King Viserys Targaryen, played by Paddy Considine) yearning to sire a son and heir. Because if he fails, who will inherit the Iron Throne instead?

First the good news. House of the Dragon contains almost all the essential ingredients of Game of Thrones, and in similarly extravagant quantities. Blisteringly graphic violence. Orgies. Prostitutes. Incest. Marriages of the most cynical expediency. Endless plotting and politicking. Misogyny, both casual and brutal. Heroines hell-bent on proving that they can be as strong a leader as any man. Liberal use of the c-word. And, of course, lots of splendidly cod-medieval character names (Lady Alicent Hightower, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, Lord Lyman Beesbury).

As before, there are some inventively grisly villains (watch out for the crabs) and a soundtrack of booming orchestral grandeur (strings that soar and swoop like the dragons, and drums like thundering hooves). And the plot, as fans would expect, is an intricate and slowly spun web of rivalries and resentments, betrayals and revenge.

In one key area, however, I think the early episodes of House of the Dragon fall a little way short of Game of Thrones. Above the sex, the blood and the battles, what made Game of Thrones so hideously compelling was the nightmarish vividness of its characters. Head-spinningly numerous, garishly varied and instantly memorable, they constituted an almost Dickensian gallery of grotesques. I could fill the remainder of my word count just listing them. The radiantly hateful Queen Cersei. The sinisterly saintly High Sparrow. The gleefully sadistic Ramsay Bolton. The joyously foul-tempered Hound…

Of course, some of these great characters didn’t appear in the first series. So perhaps House of the Dragon’s best characters will emerge later, too. Of those I’ve seen so far, however, I think only two truly measure up to the menagerie of monsters from Game of Thrones. First, Matt Smith’s Prince Daemon Targaryen, a scheming, preeningly conceited sociopath, slithering with serpentine menace. And second, the chilling Lord Larys Strong (played by Matthew Needham).

Some of the others, however, seem a touch functional. The biggest lack is a character to match Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones’s mini Machiavelli. Drawlingly witty, devilishly ingenious, perpetually getting himself into trouble and then somehow getting himself out of it: no one on House of the Dragon possesses his wicked charisma. In fact, there’s no one really funny in it at all. No one to give the dialogue a dash of playful zip and zing, like Tyrion, or the blokily blunt Bronn, or Lady Olenna Tyrell (the Westeros equivalent of a Wodehousian aunt).

I don’t mean to suggest that House of the Dragon is a letdown. It’s not. It’s well made. It’s brilliantly shot. It seethes with tension. And I’m dying to know what happens next, particularly after the shocking end to episode six. It’s just that Game of Thrones – well, the first seven-eighths of Game of Thrones – set a dauntingly high bar.

Perhaps, later in the series, this new show will manage to clear it. To begin with, though, I’d say it’s got more dragons – but not quite as much magic.

House of the Dragon begins on Monday on Sky Atlantic and NOW at 2am and 9pm and will be available to watch on demand from 3am