There are a myriad of reasons of why this show is awful. For the exception of Henry Canvil, they did a terrible jobs with casting these roles. Even if you have never played the games or read they books, you will be let down by the underwhelming acting.

None of the characters have any chemistry on screen and the performances feel forced. The shows attempts at humor fall completely flat and just end up being annoying.

Titular characters, like the Lion of Cintra, have zero charisma on screen. One has to wonder if they choose effects over quality when it came time to manage the budget. But by that logic the effects would be impressive... They are not.

The effects are akin to an 80's fantasy movie like Krull (at least Krull was entertaining).

I really wanted to like this show as I've been a fan of the source material for years. The one thing the show did well was keeping the narrative fairly close to the books but it was not enough to overcome bad acting, bad directing, lousy casting and lame effects.

Henry Canvil did an admirable job, even though the voice he choose was pretty bad (ie. Bale-batman), but he couldn't carry the show all on his own. I kept powering through the episodes in hopes that it would get better. Unfortunately, this show was truly terrible.

It's sad that true fans waited this long for a "big" budget adaption and got this bile instead.