This show has some awesome scenes in it and then some very bad ones. Most notably the market fight scene in episode 1 is very good. I would rather see only 4 episodes with that quality than 8 with filler scenes, political ideas injection and obvious low quality monsters. The Witcher is very promising and hopefully builds on what makes it great:
Geralt fighting awesome dark scary monsters
Quality monster and monster backstories
gritty one-liners (a plain hmmmmmmmmmmm from Geralt)
awesome fantasy locations, castles and dungeons including backstory
weapons and armor including magical ones and some backstory to them
magic potions and then magic used during fighting as if it was normal (like fight scene at the market when these guys were pushed back at hand gesture)
Well worth the watch but you have to go through some lesser scenes as well.