Season 1

[7.5/10]. It has some fundamental problems, but this first season manages to end up a thrilling watch. I've previously played The Witcher games (1, 2 and a large chunk of 3) and read several of the books. I felt quite prepared for what the show would present, but it turns out to be fairly confusing to follow even for someone acquainted with the world.

My biggest concern going in was the casting, especially Henry Cavill in the role of Geralt. I didn't need to be worried, he absolutely owns the role and was a perfect fit. Similarly, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer seemed a bit of miscasting (I think so many of us had the image of what the video games presented her as), but she ends up being one of the most compelling parts and really fits as the character.

Where the show stumbles is in laying the basics of the story. The early episodes are especially difficult to get through. If you really pay attention to the dialogue, it eventually becomes clear that each character's story is taking place at a different time (Yennefer many decades prior, Geralt a few decades later and Ciri's is the "current" time). It's not obvious. Years pass between each episode but the show does very little to suggest this, and by the end of the season the timelines are matched up. It's a cool storytelling device that would have worked so much better if there had been some clearer indication.

Very little is also explained about the basics of who these characters are. What is a Witcher? The show won't really tell you other than vague hints about being a mutant. He appears to have magical powers, but they aren't described and only shown fleetingly. What's going on with Yennefer and becoming a sorceress? What are all these kingdoms and how do they relate to each other? You'll have to piece lots of it together yourself. I admit, sometimes it's nice not to be spoon fed everything, but there are some aspects here which REALLY would have benefited from some basic details.

The show shines in other areas, though. The characters really spark and interact with each other in delightful ways. The amount of sarcastic comedy really works to the show's benefit and gives it an identity. The action scenes are extremely impressive with some of the best choreographed sword fights I've ever seen. Each episode gets progressively better and the season ended with me feeling very invested in the characters. The soundtrack is also impressive and seems to take a lot of cues from the ones used for the video games (plus we get Jaskier's songs, and 'Toss A Coin To Your Witcher' is better than anything you'll hear on the radio these days).

Unfortunately, it does all look a bit cheap. The monsters are rarely impressive and a couple just made me laugh at how poor they looked. Much has been made of the ridiculous costume design for the Nilfgaardian soldiers, and it's really an embarrassing blemish. But I think many of these issues are quite easily solved and there's the beginning of something great here. This is not a very welcoming show but once you find a way in you will be rewarded.

If the Witcher was anything like GOT, it would be season 8 of GOT.. They have so much in common: rushed, awful storytelling and doesn't make any sense

Let me start by saying that I love the Witcher and I hate saying this but what a complete mess

The show is fun yes, I enjoy some of it yes but overall it was so confusing in terms of the timeline and time frame.. They jump back and forth in time without really making it obvious so I found myself questioning everything that happens in some moments

Another thing I hated is that the show was extremely rushed to the point that I felt like the character development of Yennefer didn't make sense at all, it's like over night she's a totally different person with no smooth transition whatsoever

One of the biggest flaws of this season is the directing and editing choices they've made.. The way they chose to tell their story mixing past and present in a hard to tell way killed it for me.. I would've enjoyed this show much more if I actually knew what was going on during the scenes not after

It's amazing how much and little progress they've made with this season at the same time LOL, it's like so much happened yet so little

Anyway I'm only saying this because I like the Witcher and want it to do better in future seasons

Overall season is 6/10

From the start of its announcement this show brought out the most controversial discussions. So I followed the hype to take a look at what it’s all about.

I haven’t read any of the books nor did I play a single game so let me tell you: if you don’t know any of the stories and characters it’s kinda difficult to get into it. From the beginning it felt to me this show is directly aimed at the fans especially of the books. To me it seems like The Witcher is such a big story it must’ve been hard for the creators of this show to fit it into this show.

I get why fans of The Witcher might like this show so much and they have every right to. Storytelling is good although lengthy at times and as mentioned before it’s aimed at that audience.
For me as an „outsider“ this show is about average. Acting in many cases feels uninspired and a lot of the shows special effects and camera work feel like they’re pre 2010. And to be honest, I expected a little more from a show with this amount of advance blessings. At times you don’t really get where the show is headed especially as a virgin to this universe. Also character building and structure can be confusing at times.

Finally a word to the people who tried to tell everyone this will be a GoT-Killer: it’s not, far from it to be honest. Although I did NOT compare this show with GoT at any time during my watch through Season 1 there were a lot of Witcher Fans out there in the previous months who tried to paint that picture. Do yourself a favor and don’t compare those two shows. They have very different premises and both shows deserve to be looked at independently.

For Witcher-Fans: enjoy the show, it should be (almost) everything you were looking for.
For everyone else: give it a try but it just might not be your cup of tea.

First of all, coming to the review from the point of someone who has read the books several times (+ played the games), therefore hard to judge how someone completely new might perceive it. On other hand my wife has never read the books and she enjoyed the show very much, mind you I had to explain some things occasionally.

Season 1:
Overall:[9/10] Great effort in bringing the books to Show format. I liked that they started with the short stories and used couple of them to set the world and characters. The ending of the Season 1 is also and ending of the short stories and move to the novels, which was the production and from that stems the most often heard critique (rushed and confusing plot). Some of the stories used deviate from the source, but I felt that they captured the essence and --some-- key moments are there. If you read the books, you might cringe, but it will make sense. It was a tradeoff to fit things to ˜50 minute blocks.

Characters:[7/10] Here it is mixed bag, with inclination to positives.
Geralt (Henry Cavil) is for me so so. He fits, but I would like to see him more seasoned. His body is scarred, but his face is still unspoiled by one (contrary to books? or was it just my imagination). At the end he is fine, acting is ok and he grows on you.

CIri (Freya Allan) is a nice mystery for me. Acting wise, she did good job (for my taste) + there is something in her looks that is "mysterious" and I think she will fit nicely. Big question for me (as with many women in movies + shows ... sorry for that :-( ) is how they will handle swords. She seems too frail. Well will see.

Yennefer*(Anya Chalotra) unfortunately the biggest letdown for me. I really liked her playing the "hunchback" Yennefer, but later she does not cut it for me. She seem too immature. Also she had the most cringeworthy moment in one of the episodes for me (Rare species episode) where she fights with swords with the same skill as Geralt, where her character would fit to use magic, possibly fend one mercenary off, but preferably just watch Geralt do the work..

Jaskier (Joey Batey) is ok for me. I think he plays and is written well. He can sing well which is important. Unfortunately the overall music does not do it for me.

Tissaia de Vries (MyAnna Buring) she was very pleasant surprise for me and I loved how she played her character. She radiates power and control, and fits to my overall picture of her, even improving on it, by giving a face to it. I imagine other mages to be very similar to her, alas they are not in the show. She is great though :-).

Plot [7/10] good inspiration from the books and some well chosen stories, but overall rushing is felt. Maybe they should have done 10 episodes and work in more character development.

Music [6/10] The main theme is weird, but in longer term in good way as it grows on you. On other hand, I am very spoiled by the game's soundtrack which is superb and I keep expecting those tunes to play in the show as well, which is not the case.

Visuals [8/10] good even, even great from location perspective and scenes and clothing. All really nice to look at. Little minus due to dragon's looks and rarely fell of not so much money/time to make it better (e.g. dwarves were so-so)

rating 8/10 + 1 due to fulfilling my wish to make the books into very satisfactory show.

"The Witcher" is a standalone TV show, and it doesn't matter if it is an accurate transposition of the original novels or the video games. Despite that, "mixed feelings" is the best way I could describe it.
The overall atmosphere and characters are fine, but it felt that the storytelling was a little messy. First of all, the lore from the books is never explained despite being far from obvious, leaving most casual viewers disoriented. Names and locations are also hard to remember, with the show doing literally nothing to help you remember the essential information. They just go on with everything assuming we all took the necessary history classes. I played the video games some years ago but still couldn't figure out a lot of the dynamics. The three main storylines are supposed to intertwine but are not temporally parallel. Ciri has to find Geralt, but the other characters just travel aimlessly waiting for the mandatory intersection. Fights are well choreographed but also mixed with cheap CGI at times. Much of the talking is sloppy, although the humor positively reminded me of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys". Maybe the budget was not sufficient to make something better than this, but I hope the success the series got will help it pay for better writers and CGI artists at least. It's not terrible but if the plan was to make the new "Game of Thrones", then there is still a lot of work to do.

Alright, let's begin with me being a fan of the books and games, and that as an adaptation I think this failed on a lot of fronts. But let's ignore that completely for this review/comment, because I can respect an adaptation trying to do it's own thing to an extent.

The show is a poorly glued together highlight real attempting to introduce and connect all of the main players in a coherent narrative. The issue is, the writers decided to display the various plotthreads out of order as different timelines which is an interesting idea on paper, but execution wise is done so poorly it's genuinely baffling how it got okayed on the editing bay as is. The payoff for doing this when everything converges in episode 7 is actually deflating instead of whatever "cool factor" they desired in seeing the opening episode replay with added context from a converging perspective. Ultimately I feel it weakens the plot and coherence of their story every step of the way until the final episode where this decision stops mattering. Add on that the world is not properly established pretty much ever relative to obvious contemporary comparisons like GoT, and you have a recipe for a majority of your audience who do not have background knowledge in the source material being utterly baffled by what is going on.

Moving on from the rough storytelling, the casting is pretty good. I was skeptical when they were announced but Cavill's Geralt, Batey's Jaskier, and Chalotra's Yen are all excellent. Shaffer as Triss feels extremely weird to me both tonally and visually. I'm fine with changes, but this one feels like it didn't amount to anything and ultimately hurts the character. Allan does fine as Ciri but the role itself has little room to shine with the writing and events of her adventure this season.

The fight scenes and CGI vary from jawdroppingly wonderful (episode 1) to abysmal and low-budget (episode 6). Its not a major enough issue most of the time, but it's lows feel incredibly jarring.

The final episode also feels like such a strange affair the entire run-time. We have the obvious end point (which was executed terribly), and the rest feels like nonsense filler given an air of importance to make it feel like a season finale worthy set-piece.

The show succeeds on reinvigorating a feeling about the Witcher that pulls me back to the books and games to experience them again, but I can't say I am very excited for season 2 or thrilled at how this season turned out. It absolutely feels like this production's success is riding on the coattails of the cultural impact the games (particularly 3) have made these past few years. Even those who don't play games often have heard the name Witcher, it's just a shame the passing curiosity from that recollection that will get people to watch this show is not going to result in people have good clear idea of the world or series because the tv series couldn't figure out how to present it properly.

Maybe the show pulls through and becomes much better now that the timeline bullshit is over and done with and we can have a focused narrative with less jumping around like a mage abusing portals. I won't hold my breath though.

Disclaimer: I have not read any of the books. I am a big fantasy genre enthusiast.

I started watching The Witcher with very low expectation, with all the negative reviews from the press. But like some of Apple TV+ series (most notably The Morning Show and For All Mankind, both of which I thought were very good for freshman season), I hoped to prove the critics wrong.

The first few episodes started promising enough. Cool fights and magic, cool costumes, great looking cast, funny dialog, and interesting premise. I particularly like that the series was self aware -- doesn't take itself seriously and all in the name of giving viewers a good time.

Then it started to crack. After spending a good deal of time building up some of the main characters, most notably Yennefer, they just stopped all of a sudden. Her ugly ducking past is conveniently set aside, her conflicts with the academy barely explored, and she's suddenly on the pursuit of becoming a mother.

Even bigger offense goes to the villains -- Nilfgaardians. It is implied that Nilfgaardians want to take over the continent, but the villains are barely even introduced, let alone developed in any meaningful way. In fact, none of the characters are barely developed and their motives and conflicts are fragmented at best, makes zero sense at worse.

So none of these flaws would matter much if the series is fun. But after few initial fights, which were very fun to watch, the action scenes became very few and when they are played, derivative with no suspense. Without compelling villains, it's just difficult to root for anyone.

As the season ramps up to the final episode, all of these mess come together for surprisingly anti climatic battle and forced reunions.

So a big let down for me. I think the series's first season success owes a lot to timing. With the first season of The Mandalorian ended, and some of the other nerd's favorites like Star Trek Discovery and Star Wars: The Clone Wars still weeks away, there's lack of action series. The Witcher filled that void, a garbage show that tried to be fun. But in the end, it just didn't make any sense and fun diminished significantly as each episode played out.