I wanted to like this but the writing is maddeningly poor. The screenplay isn't quite in the same barrel-scraping league as Another Life, but it's nearly as frustrating. It's a recurring mystery in the movie/TV business - how do multi-million dollar projects get approved with scripts that are way short of amateurish?

Take the jarring anachronisms. Good historical / sword & sorcery dramas throw just enough difference and authenticity into the writing to persuade you that you're very far from home, but they keep it clear, convincing and consistent. In The Witcher, however, we have a bard badgering our hero for a 'review' with 'stars'. The tone is all over the place - one minute it's sub-Tolkien, the next it's ye olde medieval pageant, then it's just straight millennial. Macchiato mead anyone?

Then there's the structure. In the second episode, our hero is amateurishly cold-cocked and trussed so that elves and a sylvan can spoon-feed him oodles of their history, and give him a chance to right all wrongs with some sage words. No spoilers here, but this is the kind of device used routinely in many video games - a cut-scene, some contrived either-or dilemma, a multi-choice dialogue, then collect your XPs and on to the next boilerplate baloney. Forget Game of Thrones - this is closer to The Generation Game.

Then there's the humour. Like the office-bore, this series thinks it's sly, knowing, clever and funny. It isn't and it should ditch the weak gags and grow up.

I'm being harsh. The Witcher deserves harsh treatment. While a lot of money and talent were thrown at it, good writing and storytelling were considered dispensable - if they were considered at all.