The Witcher season 1

So, announced with huge bombary as the "Game of Thrones of Netflix", me and Noshi sat down in the beginning of january (yeah, backlog you know) to have a look at what all the fuss is about.

Well, "all about" and "fuss" are terms that come to mind thinking of this series.

It is sheer impossible to write a look at the series in any sort of consistent timeline... as there isn`t one.  The series hops to and fro in timelines, but the viewer doesn`t get screens with dates or "in the past" or the likes, making it all one confusing mumbo jumbo, as fallen kingdoms and killed characters suddenly appear as if nothing happened.  Until it is all tied together in the final episode 8...

But until then, you have generally three storylines.  In the firstplace of course, our beloved Witcher, Gerald of Rivia.  We follow him through various adventures and monster hunts, but you also quickly get a feel of something being off in the sequence.  Halfway for example he dines at court of a kingdom fallen in the pilot... and the girl he is fated to find is still not born by then.  Heck, her mother still has to declare her love for her father at that time.

Then there is the storyline of Yennefer, the powerfull mage rissen from the position of a misformed pigfarming girl to that of a strong magician femme fatale (literally). And woven between those, the granddaughter and rightfull ruler of the Kingdom of Ciria is trying to find Gerald...

It`s a soup.  A soup in that matter that Netflix had to release a schedule of the timeline and in which sequence the episodes actually play out.

Now, all that aside, it isn`t a bad series at all, but it is no (early seasons) Game of Thrones.  The special effects are just a bit to shortcoming for that, and once you puzzle the sequence together, the storyline is nice and progressive, but this falls away due to, well, see above.

And the promising to become epic (a castle, a pass, a batallion of mages vs an army, ...) finale... nope, didn`t deliver and actually left more questions open then resolved.

So generally, a decent series, but let's hope they make season 2 just a tat more linear now shall we, instead of tossing everything together at random...