House of the Dragon disappointed me. It reminded me very much of The Witcher, in that I kept waiting for something exciting to happen, but the majority of the story consisted of conversations about politics. When a few action scenes came up, I got excited and thought maybe it was finally going to pick up, but even these were uninteresting. I think the biggest problem is that the characters, or maybe it was the actors playing them, are all so smiley about everything. There appears to be some real intrigue and back-stabbing brewing, but the characters all respond to everything, even serious matters, with a smarmy grin and a gentle chuckle, as if they were talk show hosts responding to a low billed guest. It made everything seem so phony and unimportant. Game of Thrones was definitely soap-opera-ish on many levels, but the actors showed range, and the story had layers. These actors seem to be in the same emotional state almost indefinitely, and the story consists of one very thin layer.