I do like athmosphere of this Witcher series. The music is good. The sets, the make-up and special effects are decent. So I would recommend to give it a watch.

What really put me off was the casting of the sidecharacters. Witcher is about showing some of the extremes of humanity. A big message is how people often pick on those who are different. As somebody with dark skin and a weirder mind, I dig that point. The witcher game then explored the story out of the perspective of not only the majority, but a minority as well.

Through Geralt being part of a minority himself.

This Witcher adaption to me just sticks in people with dark skin to a degree that it makes it seem that people in that world are really open towards people with different looks. Otherwise why should they make gangs with characters of every bankable ethnicity?

This to me takes away from the message that people can be superficial and cruel towards people who are different. As many characters in this series seem readily accept people who look different in this show. I can understand that they tried not to piss off traumatized people who see every not diverse cast as directly racist casting and give opportunities for people who often do not get booked, because of their looks.

To me however it contradicts one of the core messages of the Witcher: people can be cruel and intolerant. The Witcher to me empowered the idea of being in the minority, but you still mattered even against crushingly impossible odds.

Now with this casting the show feels like it tries to say: people hate what is different, except you belong to a human minority, then suddenly ignorance disappears.

It's still entertaining, but it also seems kind of trying to make people seem better than they are, to not become controversial, which I can understand, but do not want to endorse. Kind of trying to sugarcoat people's ignorance and then still ostracize it. It takes away from the force of the message.

I liked how in the second Witcher game they did not shy away from showing the pogrom of non-humans. It is brutal and unfair. That's the point. That's why it feels then satifying to violently resist them. Now Geralt seems more left somewhere where he feels more politically comfortable. He does not have to stand up for humans who are different, only monsters. When it came to ignorance between humans this series seems to have taken the easy way out and it feels like it paid off, but it lost out on an opportunity to educate the people and make them revisit an inconvenient past and present.

Taking away the extremes this series it not only makes the lows higher, it also makes the highs lower. Hope some people feel me. It's hard to write about that stuff. Still entertaing Henry Cavill does a great acting job, even though I think he's too much Hollywood-pretty for the role. Freya Allen also does a superb job. Have not watched the complete second season though.