The Witch­er review – An enter­tain­ing romp through bleak high fantasy

With its inter­est in the sub­ver­sion of high fan­ta­sy via bleak ironies, bru­tal vio­lence and focus on human pol­i­tics, it would be fair enough to assume that Netflix’s adap­ta­tion of The Witch­er is gun­ning for the vac­u­um left by the end­ing of Game of Thrones. But once it set­tles into a com­fort­able rhythm, Lau­ren Schmidt Hissrich’s show has more sur­pris­es and fun diver­sions than you might expect.

Named for the pro­fes­sion of the lead char­ac­ter Ger­alt of Riv­ia (played with amus­ing can­tan­ker­ous­ness by Hen­ry Cav­ill), The Witch­er fol­lows the soli­tary, grey-haired mon­ster hunter as he nav­i­gates pet­ty human squab­bles and earth-shak­ing devel­op­ments with equal gruff­ness and dis­in­ter­est, even if he can’t help but do the right thing. This atti­tude is fair­ly unin­ter­est­ing until Ger­alt finds suit­able foils (par­tic­u­lar­ly the obnox­ious, phi­lan­der­ing bard Jask­i­er, who replaces the book’s Dan­de­lion), but once he does, the show becomes a gen­uine­ly plea­sur­able ride through the sto­ries writ­ten by Pol­ish writer Andrej Sapowski.

Though most will be famil­iar with The Witch­er fran­chise from the pop­u­lar video games by CD Pro­jekt, Schmidt Hiss­rich very faith­ful­ly adapts her work from ​‘The Last Wish’, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by Sapows­ki that pre­ced­ed the main ​‘Witch­er Saga’ series of books (each episode rough­ly cor­re­sponds to one sto­ry). That’s not to say there isn’t any­thing in it for fans of the video game, as Schmidt Hiss­rich con­sol­i­dates the details of the book with that tone.

Schmidt Hiss­rich ded­i­cates equal time to Ger­alt and the show’s two oth­er leads, fol­low­ing the plight of the sor­cer­ess Yen­nefer of Venger­berg (Anya Chalo­tra), whose back­sto­ry is clos­er to the book than the game, with mixed results. But one her back­sto­ry is out of the way, Yen­nefer becomes more enter­tain­ing to watch as timid­ness gives way to sharp wit. Between these two sto­ries is that of Ciri, a princess pos­sess­ing pow­er of untold scale, pur­sued by a mil­i­tary empire that killed her fam­i­ly and sacked her kingdom.

From the begin­ning it plays with mag­ic and fan­ta­sy tropes with a wink, famil­iar sto­ries end­ing in some­what unex­pect­ed, some­times incred­i­bly bleak places. But it also doesn’t back down from the silli­ness of the genre, with bright­ly coloured con­tact lens­es and cursed knights who resem­ble hedge­hogs. Some of the best moments come with Ger­alt respond­ing to these strange hap­pen­ings or typ­i­cal fan­ta­sy sto­ry­lines being vio­lent­ly upend­ed with a well timed utter­ance of “…fuck”.

Cav­ill is sur­pris­ing­ly fun to watch even beyond his impres­sive physique, which the show takes care to note. Though some (maybe even a lot) of it will make eyes roll, it’s all emi­nent­ly watch­able, with a vivid colour pal­let, engag­ing score and fight scenes that alter­nate between bru­tal and bal­let­ic. It’s even more impres­sive once the nar­ra­tive ful­ly plays its hand, and reveals the truth of how the var­i­ous strands intersect.

In faith­ful­ly adapt­ing the book it brings with it some ques­tion­able ele­ments, but it at least adapts these tales with a more mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ty. That said, it can be a lit­tle obtuse in how it lines up its dis­parate nar­ra­tive threads to all tell rhyming tales of bar­bar­ic patri­archy – though there are some trou­bling ele­ments that slip through the cracks (though both play­ing age­less char­ac­ters, con­sid­er the age dif­fer­ence between Cav­ill and Chalotra).

To her cred­it, Schmidt Hiss­rich doesn’t imme­di­ate­ly indulge in ​“sex­po­si­tion” in the same way Game of Thrones infa­mous­ly did in its ear­ly episodes, though that’s not to say there isn’t plen­ty of flesh on show – many will be pleased to know that we spend plen­ty of time with Cav­ill in a bath­tub, though as a whole it shares GoT’s prob­lem of lack­ing in equal oppor­tu­ni­ty nudi­ty (so far, at least).

Regard­less, between its dis­cus­sions of prej­u­dice and a colour­blind approach to cast­ing, The Witch­er feels like’s fill­ing a niche in fan­ta­sy sto­ry­telling while carv­ing its own path, even if the nar­ra­tive itself is over­ly con­cerned with notions of ​‘des­tiny’.