So far, I think it is absolute rubbish with massively wasted potential. I'm currently 7 minutes in of the 3rd episode, and have found it decent medication for insomnia. I completely agree with the score of it being 50% (or perhaps a little less). Storytelling is a craft, and this series fails massively when it comes to crafting a story. It is a jumbled mess.

Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys had "charm". Those shows, as camp and cringeworthy as they can be at times, at least told a story in a cohesive manner, and were cringeworthy in a good way (if they are your 'cup of tea'). The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, and Game of Thrones, were masterful in their storytelling, regardless of what other criticisms they might deserve.

Netflix's The Witcher is lacking in so many aspects, but most of all due to its inability to structure a story that draws the viewer in, to care about the characters and have one wanting to see more. Within 20 minutes of the series being aired, it had a rating of 9.3 from thousands of votes. That rating is constantly dropping, as real reviewers are sharing their opinion. IMDB used to be a source of decent reviews. It hasn't been that way for quite some time. The amount of new accounts that rate a new show 10/10 and say little of substance is very common, and gives rise to the perception of "paid shills".

I stopped watching Game of Thrones after the first season because to me it appeared little more than some TV soap opera like "The Bold & Beautiful", only with more violence and nekkid wimin. I was hoping for grand fight scenes akin to the Lord of the Rings movies and such, but no. Just talking heads plotting against each other, occasionally showing full frontal nudage to startle the viewers etc.

So is The Witcher TV series the same story? I don't have Netflix anyway, I don't care to pay each month for TV series, I can see enough TV series on free TV channels if I need to (e.g. GoT was and is aired in the national TV channels here). I have an account in the free Netflix-competitor now, Plex. And then I am unsure if The Witcher is even available on the local Netflix here, or is it e.g. US/UK-only or somesuch shit.

Netflix did a great work. 9.1/10

Croatia here - Netflix Witcher is for whole world if you have Netflix.
But yes, this is low budget Game of Thrones.

Well that's bad then. The little I saw GoT, it seemed quite low budget already, like how they didn't have any grand battle scenes, apparently because creating such would have cost too much.

I still get a chuckle from the scene during the first GoT season where they were about to start some big battle where that midget guy participated, but they didn't show any actual battle but just how the midget got knocked out right at the start of the battle, and the next scene they showed was how he woke up and the battle was already over, with wounded and dead lying here and there.

LOL, right, I could shoot a similar "battle scene" with my home video camera as well, for free.

I'd still rather trust an undoctored(un-adjusted for what they call "vote bridgading/manipulation/etc") aggregate/average of viewer ratings than the professionals.

Heck, even as far back as Siskel & Ebert and Gene Shalit(and others) professional reviewers have been being smug and either promoting or disliking things less based on how objectively good they are/were and more on their own subjective tastes & what they thought good and bad were**.

**=Siskel and Ebert(iirc) hated most gory horror films from decades back, calling them all sorts of names and saying how bad they were because they disliked most such films and thought them to be mostly garbage.

It's based on a video game, and all gamers are evil misogynists in the eyes of critics.

I'd blame people giving 10/10 on a mix of nostalgia and being "trained" by review mags/sites that the "correct" ratings for a game are only between 7-10/10 & that a good game deserves a 9 or 10 out of 10 by default.

Watched episode one. Thought it had a bit of a b-movie vibe to it, but not bad. Will keep watching. It's trying to be Netflix's Game of Thrones though and I doubt it reaches that goal.

Actually it's based on Andrzej Sapkowski's books not on the games. But I agree that critics are too harsh. I watched four episodes as for now. The first was nice, the second mediocre, but the third and fourth were very good. We'll see how it goes with the rest. One is certain. It's a great role of Henry Cavill.

I'm not so sure about this. The characters differ greatly from games. I don't know if you read the books. I did and see more influence from them than from games. But of course CDPR games also influenced the series in some form.

Yeah, I've heard that Cavil is a fan of Witcher games. Maybe he's a fan of books now as well. :)

I've watched up to Ep.7 and this is probably the biggest problem with the show. I don't have an issue because i've read everything and played all the games too many times, but someone watching without any prior knowdedge would likely become confused over the course of a few episodes.

Overall, it is much better than I thought it would be in terms of acting and how the story is being handled. As a fan i've been enjoying it quite a bit with some minor gripes.

Episode 6 was defenitely the low point so far, I thought it was done very poorly compard to the material most of it was based on (Sword of Destiny - The Bounds of Reason). I hope the last two episodes don't disappoint.

I watched the entire season in 1 sit. It was that good.

Henry Cavill understood the character brilliantly. You can see it in his voice, his posture, his breathing, his mimics. I watched some of his interviews where he explains how he got his friends he worked on Mission impossible to help organize the fighting scenes. How every fight is actually meaningful and adds something to the story. The producer tells how Henry kept calling Netflix several times explaining his desire to play as Geralt as soon as he heard they were planning. I am now pretty convinced that Henry's personal push made the show that great.

The story is, of course, amazing and told in a brilliant way. Time line is played with to be able to tell more. It can be confusing at times but to me that only adds more to the charm.

Almost in his every interview, Henry especially pointed out that Witcher is NOT Game of Thrones and it will never be. He pretty much said that he made sure that didn't happen. He wants the Witcher to stand out on its own, not just an other GOT clone. I applaud that stance.

Other actors are generally very good. There are some questionable choices but I am willing to ignore them since they are not that important to me. Characters were described and portrayed perfectly emotionally and that's all that matters to me.

If I had to give any points to the show...
Story telling: 10 out of 10
Henry Cavill, 11 out of 10.
Other characters: 6.
Locations and costumes: 9

I watched a bunch more episodes, and honestly, not crazy about dancing around in the timelines the way they did, having 2 Geralt stories that take place 16 years apart running concurrently and without some context clues (like young Foltest and Adda at Pavetta's betrothal ceremony, and talking about Calanthe about to take the throne of Cintra) I feel a casual viewer who hasn't read the books will easily get lost on what is happening. The story telling timelines are all over the place with little order for anyone unfamiliar with the setting and characters.

EDIT: Making Fringilla look totally different from Yen is also a puzzler, since Geralt seeks comfort from her in Toussaint BECAUSE she is close in appearance to Yen... so I'm not completely put off by the diversity choices, but turning Triss into a black woman would hurt the original narrative less than Frangilla.