If you only watch one thing on TV this Christmas, make it The Witcher
(Netflix). It’s by turns funny, exciting, scary, moving, dark, exhilarating; the special effects and battle sequences and fantastical walled cities are convincing; the casting and acting are pleasing; the storylines are a perfect balance between the intimate and the epic. I’m completely hooked.
But what makes it so vastly superior to, say, the other big sword and sorcery series currently on TV, Amazon’s The Wheel of Time ?
What it boils down to, I think, is congruence. The Witcher (being based mainly on a popular video game) knows what its preposterousnesses are and inhabits them like well-fitting armour. It knows its audience and wants to delight them. The Wheel, on the other hand is chasing a market that exists only in the tragic imaginations of woke studio executives.
What really strikes you about The Witcher, just because it’s so incredibly rare on TV these days, is the complete absence of politics
‘Game of Thrones for the post Me Too generation’.
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