The Witcher: L'héritage du sang

My wife and I are ardent fans of The Witcher series. Sadly this prequel was not of the same caliber as the main series.

Firstly I should note that the actress who plays the dwarf character (Francesca Mills) was great. When she's in a scene everything works. The other actors felt mostly miscast -- in part since everyone looked different and has different accents. Nothing felt natural.

As for the story, I expect that I missed a lot since the writing was absent of the cleverness that I had come to expect; some ensembles just work, this one didn't.

We watched the 4 episodes in one sitting. At the end we were pleased that it was kept to only 4. At the end I was left with a mild headache and no interest in more. Easily forgetable. And as one reviewer noted, this series is very reminescent of the "Wheel of Time" series, similar feel and characters that felt miscast, yet even that series was better than this.

So we have the long awaited 6 part series - oh wait it was so bad Netflix already had to cut 2 episodes worth from it, so let's try that again, - the long awaited 4 part The Witcher "spin off / Prequel". Let's start by saying if they cut bad writing / acting / storytelling away to the tune of 2 episodes, and we are left with these 4 barely watchable episodes that in my opinion should have been cut down to 1 single !short! Movie (i am not sure i found 90 minutes worth of good enough scenes in the whole 4 episodes, so a cut down to somewhere around 65 mins would have been probably somewhat reasonable), So lets take a look at what we have besides bad acting, writing that would be cringe worthy in a high school production, and obviously in todays adaption is only "inspired" by the source material. The Casting choices were questionable in many cases and the miscasting might be what lead me to state that the acting was bad before , but to be honest i think it is a mix of both. If you loved the Witcher lore in the games and / or in the books, you will undoubtedly be disheartened by this sad attempt and if this is a sign of what's to come, it does not bode well for the main show once Cavill is gone.

Okay, so I believe Netflix believes that the programme will be successful merely by having a diverse cast and including mystical elements. Right? WRONG! Please, please, please, can we return to good story telling as the MAIN priority, regardless of where the cast is from.

What makes this the "Witcher"? Let the Witcher be the Witcher, which is, incidentally, doing fantastic on its own as it has been for many years now. I really don't understand. Why then alter it? Why not use a different name for this? So many questions. The casting is appalling. The dialogue is the same. Netflix doesn't realise that pairing these hot trash fast food shows with games like The Witcher just serves to hurt the franchise and achieves nothing for everyone involved, especially the performers. Michelle was great in the movie Everything, Everywhere, but how does she go from that to this?

The reason there have been so many remakes of popular shows in recent years-many of which, like this one, are incredibly underwhelming and perplexing for all the fans of the original series-is because this is not the golden age of television; rather, it is the age of television in which "we have the rights to do whatever we like".

As a lover of the Witcher I wasn't able to finish a simple episode of whatever this is, but then again, there's only four episodes anyway... literally what is the point? I'm guessing it was some sort of test or something, well you have your answer: we DO NOT want to see more of this. Thank you very much.

Honestly, there's very, very little to like her. The plot is paperthin, so are the characters. The dialogue is horrible, things happen randomly without explanation and build up making basically everything it tries fall flat. All these backstories of the characters are laid out but nothing feels distinct or unique because there's a huge overlap in their backgrounds. There's also far too little time to even get to know and care for these characters. Even with 4 episodes it feels drawn out in the parts that don't matter and too rushed in parts that do matter. This all is not even mentioning the fact it's tied to The Witcher brand, in which case they've thrown out the little bit of information they could've used for these events, it's all horribly inconsistent with what's already established for no apparent reason other than to be different.

On a positive note, ignoring how well it fits The Witcher, the cinematography looks decent, the action is snappy and Meldorf is kinda funny.

It just baffles me how this show even came to release knowing it had to pass multiple sets of eyes for approval at several stages in it's development.

I gave it a 2 stars because I saw few other shows that were worse, maybe enough to count them on both hands, but still this is without a doubt one of them.

The lines are horrible, it feels like it was written as a kid's school play, the acting is wooden at times (maybe because of the lines they have to work with), some of the actors were not cast well for the said roles and they simply do fit in the show. (not saying they are bad actors, they just don't fit in the roles, like the king for example... and if you add the cringe lines on top of that it just turns this into a cheap parody without jokes).

I've played all the Witcher game franchise, I've watched the show as well, and I must say I did not expect something this bad receiving a green light to actually enter production.

The bad "CGI" and cheap props used in this show, I could maybe get past, but the story telling itself, the lines, the roles assigned to some actors and the purely cringe moments made me stop watching after half of the first episode just to come here and complain.

If you're one of those that don't about any of the aspects mentioned above, and still loved the show, then I am happy for you, and I am happy knowing it ended up reaching someone that appreciates and is not just a big middle finger to everyone loving the Witcher universe, because to me that's all this seems to be, a middle finger to the fan base.