The Witcher TV Series *SPOILERS*

Cdog923

Cdog923

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Anyone watching this on Netflix? My only knowledge of the story and universe is the knowledge of the game series (I've never played it), but I really got into the TV show this past week while watching it on Netflix. Henry Cavill makes a fantastic Geralt, even if the story is a bit tough to follow at times. 

 
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Cdog923 said:
Anyone watching this on Netflix? My only knowledge of the story and universe is the knowledge of the game series (I've never played it), but I really got into the TV show this past week while watching it on Netflix this past week. Henry Cavill makes a fantastic Geralt, even if the story is a bit tough to follow at times. 
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Its good to great. I've read some of the books (1st season involves the first book, which is a set of short stories), and played the 3rd game all the way through. It doesn't follow the stories 100%, but its enjoyable. Acting is great all around, and it scratches an itch that Season 8 of GoT left wanting.

How the episodes are arranged spoilers to make the show easier to understand (maybe more enjoyable):

Anything following the white haired girl (Ciri) is the present. Anything involving Geralt or Yennefer is in the past. How far back varies per episode, but Yennefer's first episode is around 90 years in the past and Geralt's first episode is around 30 years in the past.

 
I just finished it...The last few episodes jump around a bit but I liked it.

Anya Chalotra is freaking gorgeous.  

 
I looked at the trailer and it seemed interesting. Then the next day half the first episode had been watched but nobody in my house had watched it. Weird.

 
FYI - I think this is one of those conversations that will be too hindered by spoiler tags, so I've updated the thread title to represent that spoilers for the series will be in this thread. But, since at least one person who hasn't seen the show commented in here prior to that change, I'm going to put tags around my first thoughts:

As for the show, my wife and I just finished it last night. Overall, I was really pleased with it. I was never a big GoT fan, but The Witcher 3 video game is the best video game I've ever played and, in my opinion, one of the best RPG video games ever made. It's truly fantastic and it made me fall in love with the universe.

I thought Henry Cavill played a strong Geralt and I love the voice modulation they did to make him sound more gruff and serious. It's very similar to the voice acting they did for The Witcher 3 video game. I also liked Freya Allen as Cirilla but not a huge fan of who they cast to play Fringilla and Triss. Anya Cholotra has done a good job as Yennefer, but something about her performance didn't quite capture the raw energy and assertion that Yennefer from the books/games commanded.

My primary critique was some of the writing. Overall, it was probably a B- or B at best. It is NOT clear during the first few episodes what timelines the show is operating on and this was occasionally jarring. It gets easier as the show goes along, but even the final episode had difficulty establishing coherent timelines. It was also sort of odd how Jaskier (who I think is Dandelion, a fairly central character) and Geralt have a falling out at the end of episode 6, but episodes 7-8 don't address this or acknowledge Jaskier at all. Just seemed a strange way to manage that part of the story.

From what I've read, sounds like Netflix has already approved a season 2 and production will begin in early 2020. A likely release date will be 2021 and I'm all on board for it!

 
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Enhance said:
FYI - I think this is one of those conversations that will be too hindered by spoiler tags, so I've updated the thread title to represent that spoilers for the series will be in this thread. But, since at least one person who hasn't seen the show commented in here prior to that change, I'm going to put tags around my first thoughts:

As for the show, my wife and I just finished it last night. Overall, I was really pleased with it. I was never a big GoT fan, but The Witcher 3 video game is the best video game I've ever played and, in my opinion, one of the best RPG video games ever made. It's truly fantastic and it made me fall in love with the universe.

I thought Henry Cavill played a strong Geralt and I love the voice modulation they did to make him sound more gruff and serious. It's very similar to the voice acting they did for The Witcher 3 video game. I also liked Freya Allen as Cirilla but not a huge fan of who they cast to play Fringilla and Triss. Anya Cholotra has done a good job as Yennefer, but something about her performance didn't quite capture the raw energy and assertion that Yennefer from the books/games commanded.

My primary critique was some of the writing. Overall, it was probably a B- or B at best. It is NOT clear during the first few episodes what timelines the show is operating on and this was occasionally jarring. It gets easier as the show goes along, but even the final episode had difficulty establishing coherent timelines. It was also sort of odd how Jaskier (who I think is Dandelion, a fairly central character) and Geralt have a falling out at the end of episode 6, but episodes 7-8 don't address this or acknowledge Jaskier at all. Just seemed a strange way to manage that part of the story.

From what I've read, sounds like Netflix has already approved a season 2 and production will begin in early 2020. A likely release date will be 2021 and I'm all on board for it!
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Good call on the spoilers tag. 

Does Anya Chalotra's age contribute to your thoughts on her interpretation?

Also, from what I've read, Jaskier = Dandelion; Jaskier is essentially Polish for "Dandelion".


Also, non-spoiler: I've developed a serious man crush on Cavill from this. He's great it in, and he lobbied to get the part for years, which adds to his interpretation of it, for me at least. 

 
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Cdog923 said:
Good call on the spoilers tag. 

Does Anya Chalotra's age contribute to your thoughts on her interpretation?

Also, from what I've read, Jaskier = Dandelion; Jaskier is essentially Polish for "Dandelion".


Also, non-spoiler: I've developed a serious man crush on Cavill from this. He's great it in, and he lobbied to get the part for years, which adds to his interpretation of it, for me at least. 
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Totally agree about Cavill. I didn't like him much as Superman, but I've heard really good things about some other stuff he's been in that I haven't seen. So, heading into The Witcher, I was a little concerned but came away really pleased. 

As for the other piece, I'll leave it out here since it's not super spoilery, but it didn't have much to do with her age for me. The name "Yennefer of Vengerberg" holds an immense amount of power and weight in the books and video games. I just didn't get that same feel this time around, but I think a big part of that is because we had two full episodes of her essentially being in a position of weakness as we built up her story arc. I think I ultimately wished for more instances of her flexing her brilliance and magical muscle. Perhaps this will get better in future seasons where it's less about her past and more about her future.

 
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I've completed the whole first season and wasn't overly impressed. It probably doesn't help that I had absolutely no background to go off of. I didn't feel they did a good job of telling a story or providing information or background. Throw in jumping timelines and I thought it was kind of a mess. Probably much better for someone who was exposed prior. Of course I'm not a huge fantasy fan either. I loved GoT but this takes the magic stuff a few steps further and reminded me more of LOTR, of which I'm not a huge fan, but at least LOTR did a good job of entertaining and conveying the importance of things.

 
JJ Husker said:
It probably doesn't help that I had absolutely no background to go off of. I didn't feel they did a good job of telling a story or providing information or background. Throw in jumping timelines and I thought it was kind of a mess.
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I agree fully, and that's coming from someone who has what I would consider a better than average understanding of the universe.

This timeline guide on Reddit is fairly helpful, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/elazgj/the_witcher_tv_series_timeline_guide/

 
Enhance said:
I agree fully, and that's coming from someone who has what I would consider a better than average understanding of the universe.

This timeline guide on Reddit is fairly helpful, though: https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/elazgj/the_witcher_tv_series_timeline_guide/
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Actually that does help quite a bit. Still not sure of the importance of places or even the extents of their world/lands but I suppose I could do some searching.

I'm not sure what the difference is but in GoT I got a feeling of their world pretty quickly. (Maybe it was the map shown on each intro). But the Witcher, I just feel I was dropped into the middle of things with no idea what happened before or what might be coming.

 
The show is good, but it has one really serious flaw: no indication which stories are happening when because they're jumping around in time. It's a serious directing/editing/storytelling mistake that almost caused me to quit watching. But once I got past that and understood what was happening when, I really liked the show. A bit disappointing that it was so close to being really good to great.

 
JJ Husker said:
I'm not sure what the difference is but in GoT I got a feeling of their world pretty quickly. (Maybe it was the map shown on each intro). But the Witcher, I just feel I was dropped into the middle of things with no idea what happened before or what might be coming.
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I only watched the first few seasons of GoT, but I think it really comes down to the writing and overall pacing. GoT established its rules pretty quickly and did a fairly good job of allowing the viewer to grow into their understanding of the universe. There wasn't much room for misinterpretation or confusion about who the power players were, what timeline everything was happening on, etc.

The Witcher didn't really follow this path. It's almost like they expected viewers to have a base understanding of the world, throwing out names of Kings and deadly creatures like we might throw out the names of prominent college football teams. We wanted to say "OK, hold up - who/what are all of these things and why do they matter?" It takes a few too many episodes to get a grasp of that, and even then, it's not a solid one.

That's why I agree with @RedDenver in the sense that it was good, but some of those storytelling decisions prevent it from being great.

 
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