Posted in: HBO, Max, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: dune, dune: prophecy, opinion

Is Dune: Prophecy Everything Wrong with Prestige Genre Television?

Self-serious, derivative, and humourless, HBO's Dune: Prophecy is a prime example of everything wrong with prestige genre TV right now.

Dune: Prophecy is supposed to be a major slice of prestige genre television, a spinoff of Denis Villeneuve's blue ribbon blockbuster adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic Science Fiction novel Dune and his upcoming adaptation of the sequel novel Dune Messiah. Fans of "Dune" – the books and the movie – were eager for it, despite the vibe that it's just another franchise IP cash-in that it never escaped, even after a retooling where the show spent at least a year in production while titled Dune: The Sisterhood before the original showrunner was replaced along with some original cast members, and retitled Dune: Prophecy.

It's a Prequel Where We Already Know What Will Happen in the Future

Dune: Prophecy is a prequel that takes place 10,000 years before the first Dune movie and the birth of its (anti-)hero, Paul Atreides. There's a big problem with prequels – there are no real stakes there so who cares?  We know the sisterhood, or the to-be-renamed Bene Gesseritt, will still be around when the main Dune story happens. All these characters will be long-dead by the time Paul Atreides comes along, so we don't have to worry either way. The sisterhood will still be around to make everyone's lives difficult for millennia. It doesn't add much to our knowledge about the Dune universe to know that it's two Harkonnen Sisters, and thus ancestors of Paul, who made the Bene Gesseritt what it is in Frank Herbert's books. That's just fan fiction. It just uses the already-established canon of the books and movies without really adding new insights to anything.

The "Heroes" are The Bad Guys

Dune: Prophecy uses the now common HBO trope of picking assholes who are the bad guys as the main characters. Valya and Tula Harkonnen and the rest of the sisterhood are ruthless manipulators secretly controlling the power of the known universe by advising the various royal houses, including the emperor's court. They're basically a cross between the Church and the Mafia since Frank Herbert wrote the Dune books as a "fuck you" to the mean nuns who educated him. I'll say it again: they are the bad guys who plot and murder to get their way, which is to control the known universe. Why should we care about them? They're all terrible people, and the world is going to be no worse with or without them because there will still be wars and killings. The show doesn't tell us why we should care. The sisterhood is nowhere as fun to watch as Tony Soprano and his gang of assholes.

It's Boringly Derivative

Like most non-original television, Dune: Prophecy takes from other shows and movies, generally what's popular now. The sex, politics, war, and murder tropes are all redolent of Game of Thrones and deliberately feel that way. It's even filmed and designed to look similar If you told me this was another episode of House of the Dragons, I would have believed you. There's nothing here we haven't seen before in Game of Thrones and other Sci-Fi and Fantasy shows. Even the spirits of the dead mothers in The Agony look like the changelings like Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Even the gratuitously protracted sex and space cocaine scenes feel derivative of past HBO shows – like they had to have it just because it's HBO.

Dune: Prophecy is Ridiculously Humourless

Dune: Prophecy is incredibly po-faced and humourless for a show that's really about Science Fiction nonsense. Yes, you could argue that it's a prism to explore themes of power, religion, and propaganda, but would it kill any of the writers to have a sense of humour from time to time? The show is so portentous with the characters and their shenanigans that it could just be called Dune: Those Wacky Harkonnen Sisters with the Curb Your Enthusiasm playing every time something goes wrong for someone. The more serious the show gets, the more unintentionally funny it looks. Humourlessness is the undoing of many shows because the writers often forget that it's human nature to crack a joke when things get bad to relieve the tension, and the tension in this show is often colour-by-numbers. The Sopranos was frequently funny. Even Game of Thrones had jokes. Instead, we have some of the finest British actors using their classical theatrical training to sell all this nonsense and make it feel "Important" because that's what they do best, but they must know how inherently hoary the scripts are even as they find the emotions to play it properly. The bloopers for this show must be gut-burstingly funny.

Dune: Prophecy is on HBO. Watch it for a laugh.

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