There’s been an effort to show the mighty dragons, rare and all-powerful creatures who are the equivalent of nuclear weapons in this medieval world, in panoramic settings, to give them a sense of being living creatures and not just swooping digital outlines followed by a cut to an actor perched on a saddle like a cowboy atop a fake horse in a vintage western.

The early episodes are also trying to show us how this internecine warfare, which is moving inexorably towards full-scale war as royal lives are traded in the initial skirmishing over the throne, affects the ordinary people outside the candle-lit halls of power.

We see the home-life of a blacksmith, Hugh (Kieran Bew), who is making weapons for Aegon on credit but has a sick child and a wife who laments the rising price of a chicken due to the capital of King’s Landing being under blockade. Inflation has come to Westeros. Watch out for bracket creep.

But the storytelling still feels back to front. Despite the interminable scene-setting, we only notice a character such as Princess Helaena (Phia Saban), the sister and then wife to Aegon (the silver-haired Targaryens believed in intermarriage) after she endures assassins forcing her to choose which of her young children will be murdered.

It is a horrific sequence, with Helaena’s grief made public for political purposes by her mother, Alicent, but we have little sense of who she is or what her life is.

It doesn’t help that the true flamethrower from the first season, Prince Daemon (Matt Smith), Rhaenyra’s uncle turned husband has been mostly sidelined for the first half of season two’s eight episodes.

Sometimes it feels as if everything that came naturally to Game of Thrones, barring the terribly truncated final season, is a slog for House of the Dragon. Some strands even suggest a shoddy imitation, notably a quick feud between twin knights who end up fighting to the death. Game of Thrones spent the entire show setting up its warring brothers for their showdown.

You can score points on both sides of the ledger. None of these characters has a sense of humour, for example, and they’re still panning across brothels for a smorgasbord of naked flesh. Then again, if you have a veteran lament that “sin begets sin begets sin” to explain the cascade of bloodshed, by all means have the revered British stage actor Simon Russell Beale deliver the line.

And if this is all a burden to endure before the pay-off of dragon-led battles, then the show is ready to give you what you want. I’m not convinced the satisfaction is worth the wait, yet I’m still watching. Who’s labouring now?

House of the Dragon screens on Binge.

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