Netflix's ambitious attempt to bring Geralt´s adventures to life in the first season of "The Witcher" unfortunately falls on it's face on several occasions.

The Witcher´s story centers around Geralt of Rivia, a monster slaying warrior, who travels through the continent in search of Cirilla of Cintra. Even though Geralt is the main character and undoubtetly the driving force behind the show a lot of the eight hour runtime focuses on everything else but the witcher. This and the lack of focus and poor execution drags the show to a screeching halt multiple times.

The Witcher's biggest problems are with it's writing. For some reason the already vast and complicated story which introduces new characters in every episode, is told non-linearly. It honestly feels like the writers wanted to tell this story in the most tedious way possible. Sometimes characters throw up exposition by the buckets just to explain what actually happened in the previous episodes. Most of the dialogue comes off as meaningless and after long and drawn out scenes of characters explaining the plot to each other, I started to lose my interest in the narrative and characters.

The technical aspects of the show were hit and miss for me. On some episodes they actually managed to do some impressive stuff with the practical effects and CGI but then totally butchered the next scene with terrible lighting and cinematography. The show had constantly weird framing and the overall directing was noticeably bad in general but out of nowhere they manage to pull off a one take action scene with amazing choreography and effects. The costume design was often notably poor but luckily the occasional plastic breastplate didn´t break my immersion.

The show managed to positively surprise me on couple of occasions. I think Henry Cavill gives a great performance as Geralt of Rivia and somehow was able to capture even the smallest of subtleties of the White Wolf. He is clearly dedicated to this character physically and mentally and showed multiple times, that he is the right choice for the role. The singing bard Jaskier (aka. comic relief) managed to get few laughs out of me but often times overstayed his welcome. Yennefer´s character arc started out fairly strong but turned into a mess in the final episodes. But the weakest character in my opinion was Cirilla. Her actress did the best she could with the material and dialogue she was given but the "journey" that she embarks on achieves close to nothing in this first season. She aimlessly wanders around making bad choices and literally does nothing of significance.

Overall I can´t really recommend the Witcher and as a huge fan of the game I was really disappointed by the first season.The constant jumping between timelines, goofy delivery by the average cast and inconsistent cinematography and special effects makes most of the first season a chore to get through. It has it's good moments (like episode 3) but in the end, the Witcher reaches it's messy final and goes out not with a bang, but a whimper.