Does House of the Dragon hate its male viewers?

Mark Millar, creator of series including Netflix’s forthcoming American Jesus, has a theory that movie and TV fashions work in 11-year cycles and that we’re just starting a new one now. If he’s right – and I think he is – then it would explain a lot about the second-most disappointing series currently on TV, House of the Dragon.

Up till now, I have been giving huge quantities of benefit-of-the-doubt to House of the Dragon. But having endured episode six, I think my patience is finally exhausted. Any TV episode that begins with a protracted and graphic childbirth scene is going to sorely challenge the interest of at least half of its potential audience: most blokes can’t even stomach the thought of watching their own children being born, let alone someone else’s. But when a TV episode throws more grisly gynaecology in at the end too, you start to wonder: does House of the Dragon have a problem with male viewers?The answer, I fear, is yes. How else do you explain the fact that at this stage of the series – the younger actresses from the early episodes having been confusingly replaced by older, dowdier ones – there is not a single female lead left who is fanciable? Or the toecurling scene in the middle of Episode 6 where Princess Rhaenyra (now played by Emma D’Arcy) stands up to make an important point in the court’s privy council session only to be undermined by an embarrassing visibly-leaking-breasts moment.I was gobsmacked by that scene – and so was my wife – for so many and various reasons. Clearly, the scriptwriter had heard of such an incident in a corporate boardroom and thought: ‘I’ll use that. Only this time, it will be in a sword and sorcery fantasy setting.’ But taken out of its contemporary modern context it just doesn’t work. Why would anyone in an era as unsqueamish as the cod-Medieval period in which Dragon is set find it remotely awkward that maternal breasts produce milk?My suspicion, though, is that advancing the plot or developing character wasn’t the scene’s primary purpose. Rather, its main one – see also the first agonising childbirth scene and the second childbirth scene; oh, and let’s not forget the ‘women gets burned alive by dragonfire’ scene – was just to bang on and on and on until we get the message, just how tough and thankless and bloody miserable it is being a woman.You have to ask: what place does this achingly worthy feminist nonsense have in a sword and sorcery fantasy series? None, if you ask me. If I want to see frumpy women whining about being women I can go and watch, say, the women’s prison drama Orange Is The New Black. But if I’m watching the prequel to the one of the most sex-and-violence-drenched shows in the history of TV, what I’m hoping for is a bit more of the same.Actually that’s a lie. If I’m honest, I used to fast-forward through all the sex scenes in Game of Thrones. And even the violence turned my stomach. But still I enjoyed it because Thrones had qualities that Dragon just doesn’t: strong, distinct characters; endlessly gripping plotlines; verve, cheekiness, irreverence, wit, black humour, scope, imagination. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: watching Dragon feels like being back at school and as a special treat your English teacher plays a video of the Shakespeare play you’re studying. Except it’s not a treat at all: it’s just a bunch of boring actors in Medieval costume, speechifying in gloomy interiors.

And the main reason, I believe, is that it’s the last gasp of the woke entertainment cycle. Just as Environmental Social Governance (ESG) was devised by communists to stop business from actually doing business, so woke was devised by communists to prevent the entertainment industry from entertaining. That’s because always but always, traditional artistic concerns like plot, character, motive, and so on are forced to take second place to irrelevances like the diversity agenda. And the result, always and inevitably, is a diminution in artistic quality.

A lot of critics don’t mention this, either because they’re woke themselves and onboard with the programme, or because they’re frightened of being closed down with accusations of racism. But someone needs to say it, again and again, because fads like quota-driven diversity casting are diminishing the viewer’s experience.There was a perfect example of this in Episode Six in a key scene involving the true paternity of Princess Rhaenyra’s children. Rhaenyra is white, her gay husband is black. In the previous episode we saw them agreeing to having an open marriage. Since then – there has been a ten year time jump – Rhaenyra has given birth to three sons not one of whom looks even remotely mixed race.Now you would have thought that this glaringly obvious fact would be commented on in court circles. But no one does. Yes, they speculate that maybe Rhaenyra’s handsome knightly gentleman friend (who seems to have appeared out of the blue) is the true father. But no one cites the most compelling reason for suspicion. Which is just bizarre.I had wondered, nay hoped, in the early episodes whether at some stage the differing skin colours of the various knights would be explained so that it made sense. Maybe it would emerge that these particular branches came from Dorne or somewhere. But no. They are actually practising colour-blind casting for woke reasons, not artistic ones. It’s like Bridgerton. We’re just supposed not to notice.