The Witcher: L'héritage du sang

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.

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.

I actually surprisingly felt like all of the casting had some great acting potential, but there is basically zero character development in this show -- it's almost as if a 40 episode series were condensed into a very long YouTube summary/recap video, and all of the development is narrated out to you... like Netflix didn't really want to spend the time/money on a complete show, but someone in the studio thought it'd be really cool to squeeze this prequel in before the next season of the Witcher, to give the audience some background: all while producing something with room for literally every single woke trope under the sun! Kind of hilarious if you think about it.

The show actually might have been better done as an animated series, and honestly, a lot of the tone of the show struck similar to some recent shows like Vox Machina and Dragon Age. And a pretty decent Witcher animated movie does already exist anyway.

Overall though, I've seen worse unfortunately; probably isn't so bad if you maybe wanted to put it on in the corner of your screen while getting some other work done. Basically could serve as a podcast with some decent action scenes worth tuning in to scattered throughout 🤷‍♂️

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.