The Witcher

Obviously Netflix's attempt at making their own Game of Thrones ("More boobs! More blood! More swears! We have to show we're serious!"), but thankfully it ends up being its own thing. The nonlinear storytelling of the first season could have been handled better, and I'm still not sold on some of the casting choices, but the end product is never less than watchable. Interested to see where they take it next. UPDATE: They ruined it. Typical.

I ended up enjoying this, but holy fuck is it all over the place structurally and narratively. More often bemusing than anything else, I spent several hours a day pondering what the fuck ‘The Law of Surprise’ really means. It slowly won me over somehow. A mess, but an interesting one. Desperately needs reigning in for a second season.

Made me all existential: I kept asking myself, "I know I don't really watch TV like I used to... maybe this is actually good TV and I don't know what makes good TV anymore? Or is it meh TV and I'm being misled by The Algorithm?" Thank you, Criticker, for affirming the latter, proving the worth of *your* algorithm, and leading me gently away from the edge of yet another mild existential crisis.

Nilfgaard is for losers. I only travel to Milf-gaard, and if a Witcher doesn't protecter her from my 'monster' we might have a Child Surprise. Maybe I'm reading the show wrong thinking a Witcher is a metaphor for a condom, but I feel pretty confident. Why else would the Witcher protecting the Child Surprise be a central plotline? How many fucking times can you seriously say Child Surprise before I start reading to much into it show? Huh? Tell me again, dramatically, about the Child Surprise.

An interesting world, but mighty messy and confusing for those without prior experience with the series (books/games). Could use more lore/historical backstory and clear indication of timeline jumps. It all came together somewhat in the end, but for the first half of season 1 it's hard to tell "when" certain things are happening. Despite all the problems, its popularity gives hope that a bigger budget will lead to better results in follow-up seasons.

Solid but flawed Dark Fantasy series based on the books by Sapkowski which also spawned the successful video game series. While it's no Game of Thrones, and it doesn't have to be, it does seem to lack certainty of what it is trying to be in it's first season, veering from mature dark themes, action adventure, political drama, horror fantasy to cringe inducing humour regularly. Hopefully the feedback from viewers will help them settle down and find the right rhythm of the show in S2.

The story runs on three seperate lines and while I enjoyed most of the screen time when the protagonist was present, most of the show isn't about him at all. Instead we focus on a strange young woman who just keeps running in the forest and politics. Lots of politics concerning countries we don't know anything about, so I couldn't care less. On the cover Witcher is a very appealing show to fantasy fans, but it fails to deliver. Overall a botched opportunity to show something truly spectacular.

This thrives on cavill's unexpectedly great performance, while most of the other cast sucks balls. Chalotra looks like a background dancer in a second rate RnB-video, not like a classy, timeless sorceress. Well, boobs, i guess, but heck, they had buring at hand, why not take her?! The "dunkirk"-schtick is neat, but it might get pretty confusing to people who go in blindly. Could've done with a lot more monster hunting, though. Hm.

Time is a foreign concept here. Jumps forward and backward by decades with no indication of doing so. Very confusing and poorly laid out, even with a familiarity of and fondness for the source material.

Cavill nails Geralt but the rest of the show is meh.