Yeah, they captured lightening in a bottle with Game of Thrones. Right kind of show at the right time. Not sure a spinoff at this point is going to be a great success, but we will see. I really enjoyed GOT until the last season. So if they are actually following Martin's lead more closely here then that's probably a good thing.
HOTD looks to be shaping up with a pretty solid cast. No A list names for mainstream American audiences but Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Paddy Considine and Rhys Ifans is a pretty established kind of core.
Show will have high production values, like most HBO shows. There's a built in audience. HBO doesn't really have a "flagship" type show right now. If the writing is just average, I can see this lasting five full seasons easily.
If this was prime HBO with the Sopranos, Sex And The City, The Wire, etc, etc, then maybe a show like HOTD would get the push. But timing is sort of an X factor here. If Rome, which I loved, was made today and in the current HBO environment ( You are sitting kind of dark if Succession is your best show), it would go 7 seasons. But it came out in HBO's prime original programming era and they could afford to squeeze it out.
The two traps I see for any current show are falling into the Sadness Porn Trap ( where it's non stop nihilism and suffering of the characters like Walking Dead ) or the Identity Politics Trap ( please no more people weighing 90 pounds total killing a room full of 300 pound giants with battle axes ) If there's good writing, a show can find a way. What HBO does well is it implies strong production values, a decent budget, gets a solid cast and gives show runners creative freedom, it only leaves the writing as the wildcard. They are running a formula and for the most part it tends to work.
