A woman (Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower) with red hair, dressed in an elaborate green medieval-style gown with gold trim, looks determined and slightly distressed. She is climbing into a carriage.

Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower in ‘House of the Dragon’ Photo: HBO Max

Pop CultureJuly 1, 2024

The age of ‘mid’ TV and why House of the Dragon defies franchise fatigue

Senior writer

Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower in ‘House of the Dragon’ Photo: HBO Max

The Game of Thrones prequel is a smaller show than its predecessor, and that’s not a bad thing.

James Poniewozik, the New York Times’s chief TV critic, recently said, “We have entered the golden age of Mid TV.” The casts of the numerous series being pumped out and tossed into the milieu are great. The shows look cinematic. Somehow, they’re all just “um…fine,” he writes. And, he says, “they’re everywhere”.

It’s a smart and catchy observation. “Mid” is just slang for average, but it also captures something of our post-pandemic apathy and malaise. We have more television than ever before, and yet many series seem to leave almost no cultural trace. The component parts of prestige television are all there, but few shows develop a symbiotic relationship with the zeitgeist like those of the recent “golden age of television” did. Instead, we’re marooned between the aftermath of the pandemic and the writers’ strike and a reckoning with the economics of streaming. Viewing habits are disparate and sprawling, fandoms are fragmented, and we watch TV in relative isolation — the days of event television and the second-screening era of social media are well behind us.

House of the Dragon is a Game of Thrones prequel, and fitting it into any discussion of television eras is tricky. Its forebear was golden age television. It was too flagrantly preoccupied with spectacle and violence to be considered cerebral, but it reinvented fantasy and nurtured the kind of pursuant online fan culture we might now describe as “Swiftian”. It did brutal, biblically epic, big-budget escapism for eight years. It was watercooler television.

If Game of Thrones had anything deep to say, it was about politics. It sprawled across multiple worlds, ideologies, codes and families. It had beloved characters who managed moral ambiguity across multiple seasons, dancing between redemption and the lure of power. It was very witty at times, but it also reduced many of its female characters to collateral damage and walked some very fine lines between spectacle, narrative progression and gratuitous violence.

Watching the first episode of season two of House of the Dragon, I did wonder if it was just a remnant of the past outstaying its welcome, being milked for gain. I wondered if it was “mid”. According to Poniewozik, retreading former success can be a criterion for something being “mid”, and approximately one million Marvel films and shows support this theory. It’s been almost two years between House of the Dragon seasons, and “event television” that mimics a film release schedule feels like someone is taking the piss. It’s also a bit quaint.

But, as much as “franchise” is used derisively, it also endows promise and burden. That comes with risk and opportunity. House of the Dragon got good reviews when it first debuted, voiding one of the big risks of a spinoff. Those kinds of reviews can sometimes be tinged with the relief of a sequel or prequel not being completely terrible, and as season one went on, the curse of comparison struck.

The show is less concerned with the multi-dimensional game of politics and power at the heart of Thrones and instead has a binary dynastic dynamic at its core. Despite efforts by HBO’s marketing team to reignite the boarding school-style allegiances fans had during Thrones, the war we all know is coming is not a multi-season, multi-clan die-off but a showdown between branches of the Targaryen family. It’s Greens vs Blacks. The children of Alicent Hightower (Emma Cooke) and the now deceased King Viserys I Targaryen (a televisual RIP to Paddy Considine) versus Viserys’s daughter and Alicent’s former best friend, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy).

Season one took several confusing big leaps in time, and aside from some occasional aerial shots and a visit to the North in episode one of the new season, we’ve been perpetually stuck within the dank and dark interiors of Dragonstone and the Red Keep. While complaints about how literally dark the show was created a perfect intersection between middle-aged bores (me) and film and television nerds (me), they were legitimate and did nothing to alleviate the sense of confusion and insularity. As a special treat for me and all like me, they have, for season two, freed the lighting director from the dungeon. Watching the first episode, I whispered “backlighting” more times than a kid who is being kept occupied by counting cows on a road trip.

Also missing from this show is the delightful, confusing and compelling pull of the complicated and compromised man. Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans face acting his face off) is the only male character who is not a man-baby frat boy (Aegon), boring and awful (Ser Criston Cole), loyal but dull (Ser Erryk) or constantly turning on his heel to skulk or depart (Daemon Targaryen). Matt Smith is so far a bit wasted in that role. My claim to the throne for Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion, Conleth Hill’s Varys and even Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Jaime Lannister.

For all that’s wrong with Dragon, episode two of the new season offers something new, compelling, and sophisticated. House of the Dragon seems to be having a crack at adding depth to some aspects of Thrones that were lacking. While many are calling for the action, expanse and pace of Thrones, the smaller world of the Dragon has opened up space for something that Thrones failed at multiple times: interesting, three-dimensional women.

Season two plays out in real-time and picks up almost exactly where season one ended. King Viserys is dead. His son Aegon, and not Rhaenyra, is on the throne. Rhaenyra has retired to DragonStone to formulate her next move, and her son, Jacaerys, heads North to visit the Starks. Aemond Targaryen murdered Rhaenyra’s other son, Lucerys, at the end of season one and Rhaenyra is grieving. The end of episode one of the new season is an exercise in repaying that awful debt, as Aegon and Helaena’s young son, Jaehaerys, is murdered in his bed by assassins Cheese (a rat catcher) and Blood. An eye for an eye, a son for a son.

The grief of women and the grief of mothers punctuate this show. In the second episode of the new season, there’s a shot of Alicent in the bath, submerged beneath the water that’s been plucked straight out of many films about women on the brink.

Where Thrones might have been brutal in dispatching quick death, House of the Dragon is brutal in giving its women the bulk of the emotional work and burden to carry. It is Cooke and D’Arcy who are the most compelling in both seasons to date, and it’s because they’re both unable to suspend their belief in the reward of chasing power while sinking into guilt and grief. House of the Dragon isn’t steered by big man politics but by vengeance and broken families held together by two matriarchs and former friends. It’s Cersei Lannister territory without the descent into sociopathy.

The show also has more interesting and contemporary things to say about the relationship between the monarchy and what House of the Dragon calls the “small folk” than Thrones ever did. Thrones had the adoration of Daenerys by the masses of slaves she freed, but that skated pretty close to white saviour territory most of the time, and there was a small nod to the use of the common people as a means of asserting her queendom by Margaery Tyrell. Otherwise, the role of the smallfolk was largely reserved for crowd shots and dismissals from court.

A funeral procession for Jaehaerys through the streets of King’s Landing is exploitatively engineered by Otto Hightower to bolster the flagging public perception of Aegon’s strength as king. Alicent and Helaena sit on a carriage behind Jaehaerys’s small, lifeless body, trading their grief for what, in modern terms, would be a lift in the monarchy’s approval rating. There are suggestions that the blockade instituted in support of Rhaenyra across the Gullet, the stretch of water that separates the Narrow Sea from Blackwater Bay, is already causing anxiety about food shortages, and we see this through the eyes of an affected “smallfolk” family. Aegon dispatches with Otto as Hand of the King when Otto questions his grip on the importance of public perception. Aegon has ordered that anyone fitting the description of “ratcatcher” be hanged, and so they are. As Otto points out, they are someone’s son, husband, father or brother.

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I’m not sure House of the Dragon deserves to be hounded about pace and expanse just yet. Thrones didn’t really kick into action until Ned Stark’s head was cut off. Cooke and D’Arcy, the lynchpins of the Dragon show, didn’t make it onscreen until episode six of season one. There is time for their stories to become more engrossing yet.

It’s both fair and frustrating that the show cannot escape its long but undoubtedly lucrative shadow, but having watched 12 episodes, I think the show escapes classification as mid. Free Dragon from its predecessor, and you get something that isn’t quite perfect but very interesting, helmed by two compelling and complex women. It might not achieve the sprawling spectacle of Game of Thrones, but House of the Dragon is carving out its own niche by focusing on more intricate dynamics and reminding us that there is room for emotional resonance amid cinematic spectacle.

Keep going!

The cast of Red, White and Brass in action (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureJune 29, 2024

Review: Red, White and Brass is just as joyful on stage, but not near as punchy

Madeleine Chapman

Editor

The cast of Red, White and Brass in action (Photo: Supplied)

After the runaway success of the 2023 film, the Tongan showcase of Red, White and Brass is now a live show. Madeleine Chapman reviews its opening night.

The lowdown

A play based on a movie based on a real-life event, Red, White and Brass is the story of the Tongan group so keen to get to the 2011 Rugby World Cup that they formed a brass band in four weeks in order to provide pre-show entertainment for the France vs Tonga match. The 2023 film was the biggest local film of the year at the box office, bringing in nearly $1.5m so it’s unsurprising that the energy from the cast and fans inspired a very swift play adaptation. A number of actors from the film continue in their roles on stage, most notably JP Foliaki as the lead Maka, equal parts heartwarming and infuriating to his friends and family.

Red, White and Brass: The Play was commissioned by Auckland Theatre Company and is on at the ASB Waterfront Theatre until July 7. The adaptation was written by Leki Jackson-Bourke and directed for the stage by Anapela Polata’ivao.

The good

It’s a play based extremely loyally on the film so any fans of the film will love it. My partner and I both cried watching so that’s something, and there was something quite beautiful about seeing a Tongan flag flying in the audience of a theatre show. Ultimately, it’s the kind of reliable story that will have audiences cheering for it regardless of the execution. And for once, the ASB Waterfront Theatre’s comically large stage was completely in proportion to the show. With a core cast of at least a dozen actors, many on stage at once, the venue felt like the perfect fit. Much more so than when two or three actors are yelling across a vast expanse while also supposedly having an intimate conversation.

Red, White and Brass centres on a tight-knit church community, and relies on the chemistry and camaraderie of a handful of friends and cousins. Maka is the heart and soul of the story, and Foliaki’s inspirational speeches (some deliberately frustrating, others genuinely uplifting) to his increasingly wary brass band are the pit stops throughout the play, letting us check back in on the emotional pulse of the show. The play is Foliaki’s first ever stage performance, and it’s a huge ask to be tasked with leading a massive cast in a big venue. Outside of some opening night jitters, he does an admirable job as Maka, perhaps because he appears to largely just be acting as himself.

Similar to the film, it’s the second act (the tension, the final performance) that shines. Polata’ivao correctly deduced that audiences, Tongan and non-Tongan alike, would want to hear singing and see dancing and feel immersed in the māfana energy. In that respect, the show overdelivers, and the final moments are an incredible pay-off.

At the other end of the spectrum, I was particularly taken by Maka’s parents, played by Onetoto Ikavuka and Sesilia Pusiaki. Ikavuka played Maka’s brother in the film and aged three decades to play his father, Reverend Pita, onstage. You wouldn’t know he was playing outside his demo, though, with his cadence and shuffle perfectly matched to a mid-60s uncle. In one of just a few scenes were only two characters interact, Pusiaki and Ikavuka discuss their troublesome son. It’s a rare quiet moment in the play and one that stands out for the actors’ ability to carry it through without spectacle.

It wouldn’t be an expression of Tongan joy without incredible set design and the wooden church aesthetic plus the heavy-but-accurate deployment of the Tongan flag was a real highlight every time.

JP Foliaki and Onetoto Ikavuka in Red, White and Brass (Photo: Supplied)

The not-so-good

The movie, like many local debut features, barely gets to the standard 90-minute runtime. In fact, it’s only 85 minutes long. It’s short, punchy and full of action. The stage adaptation is a near replica of the film and yet is inexplicably two hours long. You can see where time was added – there are a number of singing performances that were cut short in the film and are left to play out on stage, and silences are allowed to linger in real life more than they can on screen – and they’re positive additions. But I’d argue that should have prompted cuts in other areas.

The first act plays out much the same as in the film, and unnecessarily so. This is where the challenge is set and the premise laid out. It can, and should, be punchy and move through beats swiftly (in a story about a musical performance coming together, ideally we’d get to the music a bit quicker). Instead, it took nearly four full scenes (about 20 minutes) for it to be at all established that Maka and his friends would need to form a brass band in order to make it to the world cup. Where in the film, the short scenes of Maka’s previously failed attempts to secure tickets felt fun and fast, on stage it played out slowly and in a way that didn’t particularly push the narrative along. Ultimately it established Maka as someone with many ideas and not a lot of follow-through, but I would’ve loved to see that presented in a snappier, only-possible-onstage way – I’m imagining more of a montage sequence than three set pieces.

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Equally, while the b-plot of the film is Maka’s flirtations with council rep Aroha (Michaela Te Awa Bird), I would’ve happily accepted that “relationship” and Aroha’s involvement being more embedded in the story of the church, rather than as asides. The heart of the story is in the relationships between Maka and his family and church community (not to mention himself). Perhaps in a wide-release film, an element of romance is a requisite, but I think it could’ve been safely removed for the stage. Such a storyline requires a believable chemistry and energy from both actors (such as in the quiet conversation between Maka’s parents). I felt Foliaki and Bird delivered in ensemble moments but struggled under the weight of their two-person scenes.

A snappier first act and trimmed down b-plot would’ve kept the show as energised throughout as it ends up being by the end.

The verdict

I will forever be a supporter of more authentically brown shows being put on by the likes of Auckland Theatre Company. I had my reservations about the location (the waterfront theatre is hardly local for the vast majority of Tongan and Pacific residents) and wondered if ATC’s regular ticket buyers would flock to a brand new and untested show. On the venue front, I’m convinced by ASB Waterfront Theatre as a perfect stage for large, hearty performances. I can only hope the typical theatre crowd is open to accepting such māfana energy into the space.

Red, White and Brass is playing at ASB Waterfront Theatre until July 7. Buy tickets here.