We're eight episodes down and at a crucial point in the proceedings, the perfect opportunity to take stock of HBO's highly anticipated prequel to its wildly popular Game of Thrones, both series based on the books by George R.R. Martin and both streaming on BINGE.

So, to the obvious question: "Is HotD as good as GoT?"

The answer is "no", but should come with the disclaimer of "who cares?".

We're talking about two shows where people ride flying lizards for a living, so it's like asking "Is Big Foot better than Yeti?" (... it's Yeti).

All up, HotD has not been disappointing but is certainly missing the zeitgeist-snaring magic of its forebear. In a collision of Shakespeare and kitchen sink drama, the series has presented a solid, slow-burn mix of dynastic politics, slightly discombobulating narrative time skips, skin-eating diseases and erotic wallpaper.

It's certainly filled the GoT void in millions of fans' lives, if not exactly sending them into the kind of online, hive-mind raptures we saw during the bloody Rains of Castamere (aka Red Wedding) episode of GoT, or whenever Jon Snow got his Kit Harington off.

Speaking of milky white bottoms - and not counting the pornographic décor - there's no doubt the creators of HotD made the executive decision against emulating the gratuitous nudity for which its predecessor became quickly renowned. This was a wise call. The new series comes more than a decade after GoT's first episode went to air and audiences of 2022 are far more evolved than their 2011 counterparts, and far more likely to cancel an enterprise should their delicate sensibilities be assaulted.

Yet, as if to overcompensate for underfeeding our baser appetites, HotD amps up the gore.

Every time a bolt of Valyrian steel slices through a piece of flesh, or someone's head is pulverised with a gauntlet-clad fist (there's a lot of head-pulverising), we're assailed with the kind of visceral effects which feel more at home in a low-budget slasher film than a big-budget streaming series.

There's nothing wrong with this, per se, it's all gross fun, but serves as another example of how we're morphing into an increasingly puritanical audience which chooses screen violence over screen sex.

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HotD has also been remarkable for its dodgy CGI.

Early on, there was the unfortunate incident of eagle-eyed viewers pointing out Paddy Considine's King Viserys was sporting a couple of inexplicably bright green fingers. This was due to the fact his green-screen glove went unnoticed in the editing suite and instead of missing a couple of digits, the monarch had sprouted a couple the wrong colour.

Sometimes, like the infamous stray coffee cup in GoT, it feels as if such "errors" are deliberate Easter (dragon) eggs designed to generate online scuttlebutt, yet surely there's a more urgent conversation to be had on how, evidently, hundreds of millions of dollars still can't buy you a decent visual experience.

When John Boorman was making 1981's Excalibur, he could've only dreamed about the kind of computer wizardry available to his 21^st century contemporaries, yet his glorious mess of a movie shot in boggy Ireland still looks better than anything being conjured up each week by the Merlins responsible for bringing Westeros into our lounge rooms ... or bedrooms or cafes or offices, or trains or climbing gyms ... wherever people actually consume their content these days.

To this end, HotD is reportedly losing the battle for streaming eyeballs to its more expensive fantasy competitor over on Amazon Prime, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The bigger budget is evident in terms of splendour but whether a few extra millions bucks on some fancy waterfalls really buys you a bigger audience is hard to gauge.

Gathering an accurate account of who's watching what and when in this fragmented streaming age of ours with its fickle, peripatetic audience has become the demographic equivalent of herding little dragons.

But battles of budgets pale compared with a battles of bastards, and, like GoT, the real pull of HotD has been the familial drama. The grubby business of succession is at the heart of the story and the reason we're still suckers (and subjects) for a little luxury lineage.

Bring on the coronation.