As someone who has read the books and played all the games, I can say that I spent quite a bit of time in the Witcher universe. As with the majority of the reviews here I have to agree without a doubt that Henry Cavill is the best part of the show. The way he brings the Witcher to life is admirable. Without him it would have been just another swords and magic TV drama. Unfortunately, it seems big chunk of the budget went to pay his salary as everything else from visuals to supporting actors suffered significantly, but I'll get to that a little later. For me the Witcher has always been about the characters so I'll start with the casting. What they did right was Gerald, Yen and Jaskel. The actors do a convincing job and also portray a pretty close resemblance to the book characters. Jodhi May, playing Queen Calanthe acted well, but her screen time is pretty short. Almost everyone else seemed to be either mediocre as actors, not given enough screen time, or were completely miscast. Fringilla, Tris and Foltest being the worst offenders. The first lacked any acting skills, the second one didn't have any screen presence to convince you she is an actual sorceress, and Foltest seemed just like a grumpy old drunk. The rest of the cast is not even worth mentioning. If you've watched any of the cheap TV shows from the 90s you'll get the idea. Freya Allan, playing Ciri seems like a decent actress, her character is not well written and you can't get a 19-year-old to play a 12-year-old girl. Her storyline was so boring that I fast forwarded through some of the scenes. Story/Writing: They covered two of the main short stories from the books - Paveta's wedding and the striga encounter. Both of them were unimpressive especially the wedding. The scene with the striga was even worse than the original Witcher game intro. Everything else the writers decided to throw in as their own idea was just bad - unnecessary and uninteresting. Worst part is that it's presented in a way that will confuse everyone who is not familiar with the Witcher - events are not happening chronologically and none of the actors aged in 12 or so years between Paveta's wedding and the current timeline. They also managed to make Vilgefortz some stupid arrogant amateur. The special effects were a mixed bag. Environment and spells were okay but absolutely all of the characters and creatures looked cheap and comical. As I mentioned earlier, actors' pay probably ate all the fx budget. World design - Costumes seemed well made. On the other hand, all military uniforms looked fake and unrealistic. Nilfgaard's military uniforms were particularly bad. Cahir hardly looked any different than most of the others and he is supposed to be a high-ranking officer? Where is the scary impression, he was left on Ciri on their first encounter? World design is pretty close to what I've seen in the games so at least they got something right. Cities seemed vibrant and alive. Didn't like how everyone hated the Witcher so much. That wasn't the case in the books nor in the games. Regular folk had no conflict with him 90% of the time. At the end of the day S1 is a disappointment. I could close my eyes and accept the way they altered the story, but that cheap feeling that follows the whole show compared to others from HBO and Amazon is just unacceptable. I'm sure Netflix has enough money to make a better S2, so I'm optimistic.