Once upon a time, fantasy movies--to say nothing of serials--were all terrible. All of them. Best case scenario you'd get Willow, worst case scenario you'd end up with Dungeons & Dragons (the first one!) But since this epoch of darkness, geek culture has grown from an insignificant market segment to the millennials' lowest common denominator. We have therefore been blessed with some fine fantasy cinema (i.e. LotR) and some excellent fantasy television (GoT, mostly). In this new era, pimpled power-fantasies have receded to make room for intricate and demanding political maneuvers, chainmail bikinis have (mostly) disappeared in favour of careful and thoughtful worldbuilding, while shazam-style wizardry tend to take the back-seat, more of a mood-builder than a plot-device.

Enters The Witcher. I came to this series quite late, because there seemed to be *too much magic* for my taste (unless the magic of your fantasy world is made into a system, I still think magic is 8 out of 10 times a lazy plot-hole filler). What little I'd seen of it, while slick and well produced, did not exactly ooze complexity or originality. I've now seen most of it and I must admit I was wrong: The scenario, as taken from the books, is complex and intricate. The world-building is subtle and the forces at play are both credible and well-defined. There is some great plotting going on (although unfortunately the protagonists tend to be 'pawns' rather than actors of those machinations, which is far easier to pull off). The production is lavish, with fine CGI and great attention given to detailed sets and costumes (although neither of those are particularly original or memorable). The action is well performed and well directed, and Geralt in particular is a convincing swordsman, with a style all his own.

The main problem for me was the writing: while the rhythm is good and sustained, the dialogues are--often--very bad. This would not be so embarrassing if the writers were not convinced they had profound and life-changing revelations wisdom to impart to their audience. Many a semi-philosophical banality declared with great earnestness by Geralt or some other poor soul made me cringe very hard. This problem is compounded by some very uneven acting: none is egregiously bad, but while some secondary characters are well acted (i.e. Calanthe) many of the main characters are simply disappointing: Cavill (Geralt) is very one-dimensional (as, admittedly, the dialogues and perhaps the story demands), while Chalotra (Yennefer) is simply unbearable. Batey (Jaskier) struggles to climb out of the comedic hole he dug himself, and Freya Allan (Ciri) never shows the charisma or power we'd expect from her character. This is not entirely the actors fault: to a large extent it should be blamed on lackluster dialogues. Some puzzling make-up decision do not help (Ciri sometimes looks like a chavette coming out of Sephora).

The poverty of the dialogues and some rather heavy-handed attempts at romance/erotica ultimately leaves me with a 'cheap' feeling: this falls short of the standards of Game of Throne, which is perhaps an unfair, but certainly an inevitable, comparison to make. Had I watched this a decade ago, I would probably have been dazzled. But right now it seems often a bit tacky, falling short of its own pretensions. For all this it is an enjoyable experience and I will gladly watch some more if more is made.