I had never heard of The Witcher, wasn't familiar with the books nor the video game. So let me give you a review from an outsider. The reason I watched it was simple. I heard comparisons to Game of Thrones from which I'm still suffering the DTs after saying goodbye to the characters I grew to know and love. The jury is still out on the characters in The Witcher who I can honestly say, I don't know particularly well even after watching an entire season.

The Witcher is a fantasy seemingly from that GOT era and that is where the comparisons end for me. I was completely confused from the first episode and was trying to decide if it was a show meant to be amusing and campy or dramatic and serious, yet I was pulled into an adventure I desperately wanted to understand. My main distraction, at first, was how disconcerting the Witcher's deep voice was, it was laughable and made me want to clear my throat to help him get his voice back. Season one, episode one, didn't bother to establish comfort for those new to the story, just confusion as scene after scene, character after character is thrown into the mix. First, a man fighting a monster, meeting a few weird people, a Royal family dynamic that was in dire straights with an enemy storming the castle, women being gathered up by a stern woman for an unknown reason, characters being added each episode that didn't seem to fit with those already introduced in previous episodes, hard to follow dialogues not aided by bizarre dialects and accents, battle scenes between armored men fighting for Lord knows what and dying from split or decapitated heads, add some magic, a few mutant animals and I couldn't have been more lost. I didn't even realize until Episode Five that that I had been watching a flashback stuck in the middle of the story with some of the same people. (I thought they looked familiar!)

I continued to watch despite my complete ignorance and I couldn't turn away. For some reason, it made me more determined to figure out who these odd balls were, what they had in common, why they were fighting, what magic each character had, were they good or evil or just scenery. Surprisingly, I actually comprehended the incomprehensible by the finale. I'm not sure the producers, directors, writers or actors meant it to be a puzzle for first timers to The Witcher series but to me and my family it was. Although it may not replace the hole in my heart for the loss of my beloved GOT, we thoroughly enjoyed The Witcher and for those who are willing to invest a bit of time and are not too impatient to let the story play out, it's a damn good ride. I can't wait for Season Two because I think I get it now.