The Witcher season 2

The first season of Netflix's fantasy adventure, The Witcher, was a messy experience that never quite found its stride with the story despite having a wealth of source material to utilise. Instead, the show disgruntled many fans of the books and videogames by taking liberties with the story to create something that proved to be very uneven. The poorly established use of multiple timelines, an unclear sense of this universe's geography where everything fits in and a muddled handling of the backstory and lore of the characters saw me unimpressed with season one. Thankfully the show's leaving man, Henry Cavill as Geralt, was the one saving grace and, with any luck, season two might iron out any wrinkles for a smoother experience...

And, going by the first episode as Geralt and Princess Ciri enter a mysteriously empty town, the second season of The Witcher found itself looking really good. This almost self-contained episode focused on a small story that was engaging to watch as it allowed time to develop the characters while exploring the interesting world of this series. Unfortunately, this wasn't to last as the rest of the season jumps around with stories of dull political scheming, impending wars between humans and elves, and prophecies over The Wild Hunt, which is all very poorly handled. Sadly, that great first episode was the only one to really adhere to the books and everything else has been conceived for the show, which is a nice reminder of where Game of Thrones went wrong.

The monster-of-the-week storyline has fallen out of fashion in today's TV but this is really where The Witcher could excel by setting its reach smaller while gradually developing a larger story off in the distant background. Instead, the writer's have seemingly bitten-off more than they can chew and the end result is an unengaging chore that looks nice but is somehow more of a mess than the first season.

Cavill still does his best again as Geralt amongst the awful screenplay but it's sad to hear how he is such of the fan of source material, almost standing in as an encyclopedia for directors, when the showrunners seem more interested in crafting their own ill-conceived story which feels like a waste of his talents. To make matters more baffling, Neftlix has already released a trailer for the prequel series where they hope to expand on the history of this universe but without Cavill and the little regard to the books this series has shown so far, I feel like that is destined to fail.

I really wanted to enjoy this season and the first episode had me convinced Netflix were on to something much better but this has sadly been a disappointing return which has me wondering how much longer this show can continue in this form. Cavill has dedicated himself to the role but the jumbled material around him just isn't worth his time making season two one I would say is best avoided.