re: The Witcher - Season 1 (Netflix)

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The Witcher season 2 will have a 'much more focused' story

The priority for the first season of The Witcher, showrunner Lauren Hissrich said in November, was setting up stories "that really capture audiences for years at a time." With the show now live and a second officially locked down, Hissrich gave GamesRadar some insight into what fans can expect in season two.

"What’s great about season two, I can tell you, is that, in what we’ve written, the story becomes much more focused. There’s a stronger drive in the story, because all of the relationships that we’ve been setting up in season one actually start to come into fruition in season two," Hissrich said.

"Characters start meeting and interacting more. That goes well sometimes. It doesn’t go well sometimes. But it’s kind of like, all of those building blocks that we set up for the world finally start to come together into something a little more concrete."

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The visuals are incredible.
The acting is laughable.
The storyline is cheesy, all over the place, and mostly trash.

Very good for light watching. Will continue to watch more seasons but GOT 2.0 it is not.

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What it lacks, though, is tonal consistency. This is a show with moments of drama and of gruesome violence cut through with a glancing humor that too often feels tossed-off and out-of-place in the world the show has created. The show’s dramatic sensibility is intense and indulgent, crafting action sequences whose length bulks out episodes past hourlong running times. Its comic sensibility is puerile and a bit sarcastic. Indeed, Henry Cavill’s “Witcher,” a hunter of supernatural beings, and his frequent scene partner, Joey Batey’s jester and bard Jaskier, can feel like a TV pairing less serendipitously unlikely than discordant — a regular Jon Snow and Butt-Head.

Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia is among a dying breed of witchers, and he faces down his situation with a sort of mournful, cynical gravity cut through with bitter wit. The actor, known for his work as Superman in DC Comics films, is perhaps not built to be a Deadpool-style one-liner machine, and the pitched-down, gravelly affect he adds to his voice makes witticisms drag. I don’t believe someone this self-serious would claim to have had his “arse kicked by a ragged band of elves.” (By contrast, he somehow manages to sell Geralt’s moroseness of being truly alone in his wisdom.) Jaskier’s nattering insertions, asking Gerald in one fraught instance if he’s “perhaps short of a marble,” have the shape of jokes but need either punch-up or to be minimized to allow an overstuffed story room to breathe.

For it’s not just Geralt and Jaskier demanding our attention. This universe feels crowded, often in good ways — we’ll meet some new doctor or local potentate who could, perhaps, anchor a whole episode, and see tantalizingly just enough of them. But the main cast also includes Anya Chalotra as the sorceress Yennefer and Freya Allan as a princess coming into her power; those two occupy not just subplots but entire wings’ worth of story. That leaves “Witcher” episodes both overlong and centerless. There’s not quite enough fully developed characters to make this feel like a big ensemble show like “Thrones,” and so we crave a single center of gravity. The decentralized aspect of “The Witcher,” instead, emphasizes certain faults, like how Cavill doesn’t quite embody the Han Solo aspect of his roguish-hero role enough to hold the screen fully.

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As far as the Yennefer story goes, is the beginning stuff a flashback? At the ball thing it showed little Adda and Falston. So is that part showing us stuff before the Geralt timeline we are following?

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What it lacks, though, is tonal consistency. This is a show with moments of drama and of gruesome violence cut through with a glancing humor that too often feels tossed-off and out-of-place in the world the show has created.

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