The storyline jumps around massively in terms of timeline; that's not necessarily a bad thing, e.g. I liked the way it was done in the film Dunkirk.

However in that film the viewer was told when things were happening even if they weren't in sequence. In the Witcher there is absolutely nothing to tell you that which is incredibly confusing and makes it harder to follow and I can see why that would make people switch off.

I'd played a couple of the Witcher games so I already knew some of the story but I was still left perplexed at times.

There's a lot of things not fully explained as well, like what actually is a Witcher. Some sort of flashback early on to Geralt undergoing his mutation I think would help people who've not read the books or played the games. That was done for Yennefer so I don't understand why it wasn't for the central character of the show.

I watched the first episode with a friend who hadn't played any of the games or read the books but was nevertheless excited to watch the show from what they'd seen - they were completely turned off by the end of the first episode.

If you persevere its entertaining enough but the execution overall I think is poor given the richness of material from the games and books they had to work with. It's definitely not in the same league as GoT.