The prequel to Game of Thrones (GOT) has arrived. This version takes place 172 years before the first series and focuses on the Targaryen line of succession: a male heir vs. Female heir. Go figure, medieval monarchies just have not gotten the memo on equal rights - Don't they realize it's 2022?

House of the Dragon is not bad compared to 'Rings of Power' - a very low bar indeed - but it is a pale reflection of the original: It lacks teeth; it's tame; it feels more like a history lesson than Game of Thrones. Frankly, House of Dragon reflects the wave of political correctness that has taken over Hollywood. The show has race swapped white characters; while the show also has a contrived focus on childbirth scenes and tends to push female characters at the expense of most of the male characters - Daemon is the only male character remotely interesting. To make matters worse, the characters talk like people from 2022 dressed in costumes.

Grades:

Casting: Grade D+. Actors do not reach the quality of the original series. Casting reflects the latest Hollywood tiresome obsession: racial quotas and affirmative action type casting - when they ignore the source material. It's a distraction for purely ideological, not artistic reasons.

Story: Grade C. The story feels like an Eilzabeth the Tudor queen period piece (with a little Richard III and Hamlet mixed in.) The original Game of Thrones had fantastic elements, iconic characters, and engrossing plot twists: House of the Dragon is mundane in comparison.

Production: A. Sets, CGI, costumes are HBO quality. Slightly inferior to the original, but still pretty good.

Overall: C-. This series could have been much better: The show runners were clearly terrified of criticism from the twitter crowd directed toward Game of Thrones regarding race, women's roles, nudity, sex scenes, etc. - but apparently gore and gratuitous violence is still o.k. House of the Dragon deserves a rating of about 6 or 7. I rated it 4 because the inflated ratings of 10 skew the results.