The Witcher series (Netflix)

Nasher said:
And going through everyone's houses, taking their stuff without them even saying anything.
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Until that one time you steal a broken rake and all the guards try to kill you for it. Hopefully there is at least one episode dedicated to Gwent as I went off on a massive tangent playing it in the game.
 
There's good and bad in this show so far. I like Henry Cavill as Geralt, and the fight scenes are pretty good. The one big battle wasn't anywhere near as epic as some of the GoT battles, but the sword fighting is decent. However, there's quite a bit not to like as well. The script needs some serious work in season 2, it's probably the biggest weakness imo. The dialogue seems really cheesy and cliched quite a lot of the time, and the humour often falls flat. Also, I don't feel like they did a great job with the time jumps. The jumping back and forth often felt a bit jarring and the only way of telling how much time had passed was through character dialogue. For example:

if you stopped paying attention at the wrong time you could easily miss the fact that decades had passed for Yennefer between her transformation and the assassin episode, or that years passed between Yennefer and Geralt's interaction with the Djinn and their next meeting to hunt the dragon.

On top of this, I know it's an adaptation of the books rather than the games, but the reality is that a lot more people will have played the games than read the books (myself included), so several of the characters are quite different to what I expected (Foltest and Triss for example), plus as much as Anya Chalotra is attractive, I was expecting an absolutely breathtaking woman to play Yennefer. I'll watch the second season of this but I think it needs better writers and some of the supporting cast needs working on.
 
I finished it yesterday. 7/10 for the overall season.

I have played a bit of Witcher 3 (about 5-6 hours) but that is it, other than that not much knowledge of the backstory. I found I really needed to pay attention to keep up with the timelines and definitely had trouble (realising after the fact) determining what was a characters name and what was a city/town :p

Ciri was the weakest of the main leads, just the deer in headlights look most of the time. Hopefully season 2 will expand her range a bit. Cavill was pretty good as Geralt, although the raspy short sentences did come off as hammy and I just couldn't determine if it was meant to be like that ie following the game representation more. But as I had to question that it was still pretty good. But he nailed the action scenes, really think its some of the best sword fighting put to screen. Watching a behind the scenes thing recently Cavill said about how most sword fighters used to train in dancing and seemed to really be into getting it right, which he did going by the end product.

I thought Yennefer's story was by far the best, to a point that the series could not have included the other stuff and have Yennefers stuff fleshed out a bit more but I get the feeling this is really a setup series. I'm glad Season 2 was already approved as I think Netflix at this stage may be a bit more cautious with spending more on a series with only somewhat decent reviews and may not have greenlit it but now that the set up is out of the way hopefully they can get a bit more of a coherent story in the second. Although fans of the books and the games will probably give it a go they need to entice more people to make it worth investing a lot of money into which this type of show really benefits from.

I'd certainly recommend everyone gives it a try and watches up to at least Ep 3 (The main Yennefer intro ep) as thats where it got good for me.
 
I think my only criticism really is the jumps - too often it jumps in time, place or into a functional scene (i.e. ascension) without actually any introduction to why or leave you any wiser as to the meaning of the scene in some cases - what the likes of LOTR and GOT did well was giving you a reference for stuff like that so you had a rough idea of what part of the world something was taking place in and how it connected to other places, etc. or what the purpose of a ritual was and so on. Having watched and read, etc. a lot of this kind of stuff I can at least roughly figure it out or at least kind of understand where it is likely to fit in later, etc. but for someone with less experience or less interest in this kind of stuff I'd imagine it can be a bit baffling at times.
 
Watched 20 or so minutes of the first episode yesterday and found it really difficult viewing. Just something about it feels very dull, will try again later maybe when its not so late.

Find the voice of Geralt pretty grating even though it’s pretty spot on to the games
 
4 episodes in and really enjoying this so far, apart from the 'goat dude' looked a little cheap in the second episode the rest of the effects look well. Glad I was awake with episode 4 last night due to the time jumps.
 
We watched all episodes on lazy day yesterday and overall a 7.5 / 10.

Really feels like a long prologue of sorts to introduce the characters. Was hesitant about Yennefer, but feel the actress did a really good job and nailed her story for most the part, her story line was very impressive and the best of the three imo. Henry Caville pretty much stepped out the games for me so no issues there. Really did enjoy monster hunt / battles. Ciri was meh, but at the same time she was pretty much on rail for her role in this first season.

The time jumping back and forth however was not handled well at all. Having read the books and the knowing the lore somewhat, I could place events, but even then things were somewhat perplexing. I thought possibly the writers of the show had diverged significantly from the books, but realised no, they were just jumping back and forth in time. This is the biggest problem, know its going to stumble a lot of people up who have little prior knowledge.

So yeah, overall solid, hopefully now that a decent foundation has been some laid, we will see some movement in the right direction and time jumps if there are any more in season 2, handled more elegantly.
 
Loved it, room for improvement? Deffo but a good platform to build upon.

timeline had me puzzled only till the end of the hedgehog episode did it click this was in the past and was cirri’s mum. Plus loads of other episodes had same effect but now that the watched the full season I can place everything in order. A “30 years ago” title would have been helpful.

things that could be improved, music, sets (some looked a bit cheap) character relations felt a bit rushed and cgi could use some work.
 
I watched it all and I really wanted to love it, but it just didn't work for me.

The story was too disjointed. Not in an impossible to follow way, just in an irritating and jarring one. Acting beyond a few of the main cast (Cavill and "Roach" mainly!) wasn't good. The direction for the extras was almost non existent in a lot of the scenes with people just repeatedly doing the same sction over and over to fill time. I laughed out load at one battle scene where in the background there was meant to be a fight going on and they were just half heartedly waving their swords in the air vaguely in the direction of each other. I just find things like that really make it hard to suspend disbelief. Not to mention characters making decisions that made no sense based on what had been seen previously.

It did have some things I liked, but just can't help the feeling that it should have been so much better than it was.
 
nicktay2605 said:
There's good and bad in this show so far. I like Henry Cavill as Geralt, and the fight scenes are pretty good. The one big battle wasn't anywhere near as epic as some of the GoT battles, but the sword fighting is decent. However, there's quite a bit not to like as well. The script needs some serious work in season 2, it's probably the biggest weakness imo. The dialogue seems really cheesy and cliched quite a lot of the time, and the humour often falls flat. Also, I don't feel like they did a great job with the time jumps. The jumping back and forth often felt a bit jarring and the only way of telling how much time had passed was through character dialogue. For example:

On top of this, I know it's an adaptation of the books rather than the games, but the reality is that a lot more people will have played the games than read the books (myself included), so several of the characters are quite different to what I expected (Foltest and Triss for example), plus as much as Anya Chalotra is attractive, I was expecting an absolutely breathtaking woman to play Yennefer. I'll watch the second season of this but I think it needs better writers and some of the supporting cast needs working on.
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I'm only on Ep6, but I agree with pretty much all of this. Personally I'd say Anya is giving the strongest performance, I'm liking her portrayal of Yen - Caville can feel a bit...off at times, probably because of him forcing the voice a bit too much.

But the script definitely needs some tightening. I'm not sure if it's the lines, the actors delivering them or both, but some of it is a bit cringe. I've got high hopes for S2 though - I've seen plenty of shows that are fairly rough in S1, but once everyone settles into their roles it usually improves.
 
I'm still liking it rather than loving it. But that's how I felt after the first season of Game of Thrones. The potential though is certainly there.

I've not read the books and have only played The Witcher 3 to completion but Geralt is perfect as far as I'm concerned. Sarcasm delivery right on point.

Yennefer though? Went from being a Claudia Winkelman lookalike and then turned into Tracy Emmin. Not the most attractive woman you've ever seen in the world ever.

Dandelion still reminds me of Ant and Dec. I just can't get past the annoying over the top "quirkiness".

I like Ciri though. She has very weird eyes. Not sure if its cgi. But they are weird.

And I really liked the episode of "The Surprises" that explained how she came to be who she is and how Geralt actually became involved. That was always a bit of a head scratcher from just playing W3

Looking forward to the finale tonight.
 
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I binged through it rather quickly, I enjoyed it and will definitely watch the second series as and when it drops but i'm not feeling overly attached to any of the characters particularly! I never really played an awful lot of the Witcher game but the lore is interesting, perhaps I should read the books!
 
Brilliant, when is season 2 out?

And in the meantime is there anything similar out there on Netflix or prime video?
 
Watched the first three episodes so far and loving every second. I think the casting has been superb and the three main characters (4 including Roach) are spot on.
As for Yennefer's looks, she's not described as a beauty in the books, attractive yes but not a classical beauty - I think the Yennefer of the Witcher 3 game has painted an unrealistic portrait.

The first two books are made up of shortish stories that build the character's back stories and then the main story begins in book three, so the manner of the show's story telling is as it should be - the first two books feel quite disjointed too because the individual stories also jump around in time.
 
Vidar said:
Only minor stuff really I guess, there's the fact Triss isn't a red head, they've changed the witcher medallion and he doesn't wear his two swords on his back like he's supposed to
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That's been explained.

In the books, Geralt keeps one of his swords on Roach.

It was only in the games that he bore two swords on his back, otherwise you'd have Geralt racing back and forth to his horse which wouldn't suit the gameplay, and in the first and second Witchers he didn't have his horse around so much.

So in fact, the TV series is more accurate in this respect and true to lore.
 
While I've heard of the games and books it's not the genre I'm really into. So I watched this with no real expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Took me about the 3rd episode to realise the different timelines after that it was pretty east to follow. A good set up season and will definitely watch season 2 when its out
 
I think my only real criticism is that stories surrounding Geralt could have been made a bit more involved, though... that said, i'm not sure what actual use that would be, as there's definitely a point where you can go too far with that and lose urgency for the main theme. Additionally i might be unduly expecting something after playing the games, as these stories were part of Geralt's myth (never got to actually play it) and as I never read the books, I suppose it's just strange seeing it brought to life in the manner that the director has taken it.
Hopefully season 2 is more linear, I didn't quite get the transitions until it was so obvious, I suppose that was the point and adds a bit of interest in watching it again with that in mind, but it can be a little jarring. Though i think with the last scene, that's been made apparent anyway, i'm sure it'll just be geographical now and not temporal, beyond perhaps flashbacks about Kaer Morhen.
 
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Managed to convince the wife to watch the first episode, and she was pleasantly surprised.
As was I, felt Henry nailed Geralt pretty well, and the fight scene at the end was awesome.
 
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