Witch Whey Did He Go, Jörg?: a review of The Witcher
Created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
Based on The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
Starring: Henry Cavill; Freya Allan; Eamon Farren; Anya Chalotra; Joey Batey; MyAnna Buring; Royce Pierreson; Mimi Ndiweni; Wilson Radjou-Pujalte; Anna Shaffer
Netflix, along with just about everyone else, has been looking for something to take over the spot Game of Thrones occupied as the great mega-hit fantasy series. Witcher isn’t that series, at least, not after one season. Of course, by the end of season one, GoT had already become the most popular fantasy series of all time, with unforgettable characters such as the Imp and the Kingslayer. (“The things we do for love”).
Witcher isn’t bad (I don’t waste my time or yours on stuff I consider crap), but it lacks the gritty realism of GoT, instead feeling a bit like it was shot on the site of a RenFaire. And while the writing is complex and the plotlines pleasantly convoluted, it doesn’t have the genuinely Machiavellian feel of the early years of GoT, or the amazing conversations amongst the characters in their constant vying for power and influence.
Witcher, the title character played by Henry Cavill, is a sort of free-lance monster slayer. He’s the show’s Ronin, independent and somewhat disreputable, a golden-eyed sellsword with a horse he has named “Roach.” He may be destined for greater things, but he isn’t losing any sleep over the fact that he hasn’t attained them yet.
Because of something called “The Law of Surprise” his destiny is inextricably linked to a golden-haired teen princess whose main ability seems to be a hypersonic scream. (Don’t all 14 year old girls possess that power?) Cirilla (‘Ciri’ to people who hate three syllables), played by Freya Allan, loses her mother (a wannabee Cersei Lannister named Queen Calanthe, played by Jodhi May) dies during an invasion of her realm by the nefarious Nilfgaardians, whose king is named (and I’m not making this up) Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach. Mispronounce his name and you lose a testicle to the sledgehammer of Welsh justice.
By far the most interesting character thus far is Yennefer (like the old Donovan song “Yennefer, Yuniper” which proved you can misrhyme anything). She starts out as a hunchback servant in some sort of monastery, but goes on to become one of the most powerful mages in the land, losing her hunchback and uterus in the process. (Her makeup was truly amazing, leaving me wondering in the first episode if it was makeup). She spends some time mooning about how she became the most powerful person in the world but cannot have a baby, something she showed no interest in when she was a hunchback, but seems to be getting over that after seventy years or so.
Oh, yeah. Time lines. There’s at least three of them. Yennefer’s takes place over 70 years, Witcher’s over perhaps ten years, and Ciri’s over ten days or a fortnight or so. Once you figure that out, the show gets a lot less confusing.
The dialogue is refreshingly post-modern, and we seem to have finally moved past that point in fantasy where everyone was obliged to speak in a dreadful, leaden ersatz Shakespearean cadence like the poor actors in the second Star Wars trilogy.
Witcher isn’t Game of Thrones, but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to be good enough that you can hope reasonably that it will grow in season two, and watching the first season was worth the while.
Now on Netflix.