Is this a show that stops the world, or one that drags-on?

When Game of Thrones premiered in 2011, Netflix was yet to launch in Australia. Donald Trump was hosting The Apprentice, we had five free-to-air channels and Foxtel, and internet piracy was yet to reach its peak. This epic of violence, nudity and incest was soon to become history’s most watched and talked about show globally.

It’s a phenomenon that hasn’t been matched since. That’s why the premiere of highly anticipated prequel House of the Dragon this week has many in the TV industry asking: is this the series that will bring the world back together for a shared viewing experience?

Emilia Clarke, as Daenerys Targaryen in the original Game of Thrones.Credit:ninevms

In my view, the answer is no. And it has nothing to do with the quality of House of the Dragon (which, from just the first episode, is already a far more impressive feat of storytelling than the entire last season of Thrones).

Part of what made Game of Thrones such a hit through the 2010s was the sense that we were all in it together. Watch parties boomed, with people gathering in the lounge rooms of friends who had a Foxtel subscription or a great TV with surround sound. The next day at work people would dissect what happened in the latest episode and debate theories. It became the definition of water cooler TV.

After the pandemic, the water cooler doesn’t exist. Our collective experiences are much less likely to be physical. That doesn’t mean people aren’t furiously discussing the show (who doesn’t love a group chat), but we’re all a bit more atomised, which diminishes one of the things that made a show as popular as Game of Thrones so fun to watch.

That no show seems likely to recapture the collective consciousness as Game of Thrones did has more to do with the way we consume TV, the way we talk about screen culture, and the way we live our lives.

The way the TV industry works now is fundamentally different to when Game of Thrones premiered. Back then TV landscape was dominated by traditional, ad-supported network shows. Think Parks and Recreation, Community and New Girl. Over the next eight years network TV became less and less popular and audiences became fragmented across a multitude of streaming platforms. The only constant was the ever-growing popularity of violence and sex taking place in Westeros.

Somehow, Game of Thrones managed to buck the trend the away from appointment television, growing its ratings every season and nurturing a truly global shared viewing experience that saw more than 45 million people tune in for the finale in the US alone.

Back in 2011, Australians had far fewer viewing options. That immediately increased the potential audience for any TV show.

Hundreds of thousands of people watched the show on Foxtel (numbers that many free-to-air shows struggle to get these days), but plenty more turned to piracy, becoming adept at torrenting and sharing USB hard drives at work and university. Ironically, it was the surge in piracy during that era (with Australia reportedly leading the world in terms of illegal Game of Thrones downloads) that forced TV companies to invest in streaming, and make it easier and cheaper for audiences to watch paid subscriber content.

Now audiences are spread across free-to-air, Binge, Kayo, Disney+, Stan, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and numerous other free and subscription streaming providers. Not only does this disperse the potential audience of any show, it means huge chunks of the population don’t have access to some of the best prestige television being made right now – because they aren’t subscribed to the right platform. Now, audiences are forced to decide whether they want to pay to watch the latest Star Wars show on Disney+ or The Resort on Stan (owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead) – or House of the Dragon on Binge, for that matter.

That, in turn, diminishes the power of word of mouth to help a show build hype and generate momentum. Would shows like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad have been able to grow their audiences and attract the same level of critical acclaim and cultural ubiquity if they were locked up on a streaming platform with a small percentage of the market?

So really, it’s not House of the Dragon’s fault that it’s unlikely to capture the world’s attention in the same way as Thrones. And while it feels a bit sad to lose that sense of community that comes from a collective experience, in the grand scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter. If you aren’t watching House of the Dragon you’re probably watching one of the dozens of other great shows available right now. Or maybe you’re listening to podcasts (2011 was pre the Serial-podcast boom as well), or on TikTok. Blood, gore and incest aren’t the only ways to entertain yourself these days.

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