The GOT and HotD showrunners have made good decisions (mostly forgotten) and bad decisions (definitely not forgotten). Some people could have made better shows, others might have made worse shows. But I don't like how they receive all the blame and GRRM none.

Season 5 of GOT was poor because it was adapting two bad books; the highlight of the season, Hardhome, only qualifies as book material if you squint really hard. Season 6 was much better even though there was no source material, because it did contain GRRM's last good ideas: Hodor, Battle of the Bastards, R + L = J, and (presumably) Cersei blowing up the Sept. Seasons 7 & 8 could have been much better, but even then it's hard to believe they would match early GOT because the story is off the rails, show and book. GRRM gave up on the books because he can't wrangle this story in and wrap it up. I'm sure he could make the Bran becomes king story more explicable, but if you think the story can be wrapped up neatly, you ought to volunteer to write it for him.

HotD can only be so good because there are no characters. The source material is a few pages of "history" which amounts to a whole lot of drama, reversals, big battles, and dragon deaths in a two-year span (The World of Ice and Fire). Those pages then got blown up into a much longer "history" (Fire & Blood) that I haven't read, but I believe are still far short of good characterization and arcs.

I imagine GRRM and Condal working on season 1 was two guys trying on the fly to fill in motivations and consistent characters. They already made a major change by making Rhaenyra and Alicent the same age, which is probably the only way to make this an interesting show. But it would take someone more skilled than either of them to get this show to GOT levels.

I'm just watching to see if the battles are done well and if they hit the plot points satisfactorily. But there's no one that interesting to root for, except maybe Aegon.