House of the Dragon, episode 4, review: finally, it has some red-hot fire in its belly

There’s a wonderful Just William story in which a teacher attempts in vain to tell William the plot of Hamlet.

“Listen!” snaps the teacher, wearily. “This man was called Hamlet and his uncle had killed his father because he wanted to marry his mother.”

“What did he want to marry his mother for?” retorts William. “I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to marry their mother.”

When I first read this story as a boy, about 35 years ago, I laughed at that teacher. But now that I’ve got to summarise the climax of House of the Dragon episode four (Sky Atlantic), I feel deep sympathy for him. Because all of a sudden I know exactly how he felt.

Basically, the climax of episode four goes like this. The King kicks out his brother because he wants to marry his daughter. Then he sacks his wife’s father for spying on his daughter, who’s meant to be his wife’s best friend. But his wife and his daughter are no longer best friends because his wife heard her father telling her husband that his daughter kissed his brother. And now his wife will hate his daughter because her father has sacked her father.

Thank God I don’t have to try explaining that to a classroom of unruly schoolboys.

All the same, this was easily the best episode of the series so far. After three slow-burners punctuated by the odd burst of sex or violence, we finally got some proper, full-fat drama. The big marmalade-dropper was the incestuous quickie between Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and her uncle, Prince Daemon (Matt Smith). By Westeros standards, mind you, this wasn’t all that shocking – in Game of Thrones, after all, Jaime Lannister and his sister Cersei were at it all the time.

Here, though, there was an additional horror: the producers kept cutting back and forth between shots of the incestuous pair, and shots of the baby-faced Queen Consort (Emily Carey) lying on her back in bed, her face blank and listless, while her aged, creaking husband wheezed away on top of her. Frankly, I’m not sure which image was the more disturbing.

Although we were spared a full-blown sex scene between Rhaenyra and Daemon, we were obliged to witness one between Rhaenyra and Ser Criston (Fabien Frankel), the dishy knight who ended up serving as Rhaenyra’s sloppy seconds after Daemon abandoned her mid-clinch.

Despite the ferocity with which King Viserys (Paddy Considine) later protested his daughter’s innocence to his chief adviser Ser Otto (Rhys Ifans), the King evidently knew very well what she’d been up to. Because, in the final scene, Grand Maester Mellos (David Horovitch) was dispatched to supply her with a mysterious potion, designed, in the Grand Maester’s words, to “rid you of any unwanted consequences”.

During the previous, rather sluggish three episodes, some fans of Game of Thrones may have wondered whether House of the Dragon was worth sticking with. Assuming they were still around to watch episode four, they presumably now feel that their doubts have been answered. King of the Narrow Sea was a pivotal instalment that clearly sets us up for some spine-tingling conflict to come: families fracturing, bitterness hardening, enmity intensifying at every turn.

The episode’s key line came from Princess Rhaenyra, as she set off on her illicit night on the tiles with Prince Daemon. “For one night,” huffed the heir to the Iron Throne, “I wish to be free of the burdens of my inheritance.” She certainly got her wish. And she may very well regret it.