First of all, I have to say - all the 1s and 2s, as well as all the 10s, is a sign of dishonest people trying to counterbalance those that dishonestly like/dislike the show....... You people are all ruining culture, both sides of the equation, and need to grow up, whatever your age.

Rant over, now to the review:

I'm an avid fantasy fan, I read George R.R. Martin way before the show (which I loved) got made, I've read many other fantasy writers through the years, and watched many failed - and a few successful - attempts at the genre, in both movies and on TV.

Just so you understand, that I am not a novice to the genre.

However, I have absolutely no prior knowledge to "The Witcher", having neither read the books nor played the game.

That particular writer sort of passed me by.

To compare with GoT is rather obvious, and in many respects, The Witcher is almost as good. The fights are great, the costumes are great, the scenery is great (albeit missing the oppulence and attention to detail of GoT), the monsters are good (though more cartoonish and clearly lower budget than GoT).

So far so good, we are en route to a solid 8.

However..... where the director has totally failed his audience (and where GoT really succeeded in season 1), is that GoT educated us all on the history, geography and politics of the world we were supposed to lose ourselves in.

That is completely missing from The Witcher.

Instead, you spend the first half of the season, trying to make sense of a world you have zero prior knowledge of, and is barely explained anything about, while dealing with a bunch of weird jumps in the time line, that seem to have very little actual purpose to the story, except to add to the confusion.

Having completed Season 1, I still have no idea how the continent looks, what countries are there, where they are situated, how they differ culturally - nor do I have any sort of back story, to explain how this whole world landed in this situation, or what an "Witcher" actually is.

It's like the director thinks, that the interesting thing to us the viewers, is to speculate on what the back story of The Witcher actually is...... like it was some sort of "fantasy mystery story", but set in a world we are given absolutely zero knowledge of - making it impossible to guess anyway.

That totally misses the mark - just tell us who these people are, and get on with telling a great story, while we can all understand what is going on - and why it is going on.

Some simple graphics/maps and a narrator giving us a bit of "historical" (yes, I know it is fantasy) background - and some graphics (even some arbitrary fantasy dates) denoting a change in time line - and this show would have left me with a totally different - and much more positive feeling.

Now it gets a 6, with potential for growth, if they fix the logical issues for season 2, because the basic premise of the show and the acting of the main cast, is actually pretty great, especially Anya Chalotra playing Yennefer is a great find, and clearly destined for stardom.