The Witcher Series Review

When Netflix announced it was adapting The Witcher into an original series, I was skeptical and apprehensive. When Henry Caville was cast in the lead role, that feeling intensified and intensified again when the trailers dropped. Having watched the series, I'm glad to say that all my fears were for naught in the end. 

As an adaptation, The Witcher sticks pretty closely to the stories it adapts from Andrezj Sapkowski's short story collections and translates them with more successes than misses, largely because showrunner Lauren Schmidt doesn't pull away from the fairy tale aspects and magic imbued into the stories to make them more serious for a general audience. That the series leans into the majesty as well as the darker twists keeps the series from miring in a navel gazing cynicism. 

On its own, the show is carried by solid performances from two of its three main leads, deftly executed action scenes, and plenty of witty dialogue that helps lighten the mood. Henry Caville does well conveying the simmering emotions under Geralt's monotone voice while Anya Chalotra captures the ambition, fury, and pride of Yennefer with each glance. The only lead who doesn't really carry their weight is Freya Allan's Ciri, but, that's more a writing problem than anything to do with her capabilities as a performer. 

Where the show gets in its own way is the decision to tell all three arcs at once. I can see why they'd want to- the stories they're drawing from are all mostly self-contained adventures with no direct impact on the larger plot except for people telling Geralt he really should take this whole destiny thing seriously. It's fun, engaging, and gives the characters depth but it doesn't provide a lot of momentum, plot wise. 

I see what they're trying to do, weaving multiple threads of rising action together to build a more sustained pace of excitement and cliff hangers that ties in to the Netflix's binging model of consumption. 

It's a fine plan, in theory, but fails in its execution because all three character arcs are fall into a valley of single-minded obsession almost immediately so instead of multiple threads rising and falling against each other, you have three flat lines with interruptions pretending to be complications. No obstacle is meaningful because none of them can have any impact until the finale allows it. 

Overall, The Witcher is a solid show with some of the funnest action scenes in fantasy, and where it's biggest flaw is mitigated by its short episode order so the frustration is over relatively quickly. 

Series grade: B