Show caption Big in the Nilfgaardian Empire … Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. Photograph: Katalin Vermes/AP TV review The Witcher review – swords, sorcerers and supernatural incels Henry Cavill stars in Netflix’s fantasy epic as a magical warrior battling monsters, mutants ... and medieval toxic masculinity Lucy Mangan @LucyMangan Fri 20 Dec 2019 07.00 GMT Share on Facebook

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Never before has Miss Jean Brodie’s famous phrase been so rightfully deployed as when I say of the new Netflix fantasy drama The Witcher that, for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. A Tolkienesque vibe suffuses the air, elves and dwarves are scattered with a lavish hand, and every character has 20% too many vowels or too few consonants in their name.

Based on the books by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski (and also known to fans of the popular video games based on the same stories), the eight-part series tells the effects-heavy tale of Geralt of Rivia, one of a rare breed of monster-hunters known as Witchers. These are mutated supernatural beings who roam the pseudo-medieval land divining the locations of monsters’ lairs and using their special powers to slay the variously fell beasts. Geralt’s first is a tremendously horrible giant spider thing for which I was not at all prepared. Fortunately, Geralt is played by Henry Cavill, a juttingsome chin attached to a man and quite the largest actor working at the moment, so the contest is soon over.

Geralt, poor misfortunate if excellently built Witcher that he is, becomes embroiled in a conflict between two bellicose human nations, Nilfgaardian Empire and Northern Kingdoms. I refer you back to Miss Jean Brodie at this point. His adventures begin when Lars Mikkelsen as Stregobor, mage and overseer of a prelapsarian garden full of naked people, commissions him to kill the princess Renfri.

According to Streggy-boy, who is rapidly taking on the aura of a medieval incel, she is one of 60 girls accursed and dangerously mutated by an eclipse. The 4chan mage has had many of them killed and autopsied to prove his theory. Renfri’s mutation renders her immune to his magical powers, in case you were wondering why he doesn’t assassinate her himself. It is also possible that irenic landscapes do not take care of themselves and he is kept busy maintaining the espaliered fruit trees between internet rants. Either way, he wants Geralt to end her.

But Geralt is woke as well as large, and does not warm to Streggy’s toxic masculinity. “Evil is evil,” he informs his potential employer with an integrity this freelancer can only admire. “Greater, lesser, middling. It’s all the same.” That sound you hear is a thousand monkeys falling off their typing stools in exhaustion. As it’s only the first episode, one cannot think this augurs well.

There are attempts at knowingness: at one point, our Henry tells someone a prophecy has to rhyme. This is not a good idea, as it throws into too sharp relief the limits to what Geralt and his merry band of sorceresses and proto-feminist princesses can be said to know. Play it straight, dear scriptwriters, or don’t play it at all.

My own pledge, made when The Witcher and I had to part company, is that I shall from hereon dedicate myself to becoming rich and powerful enough to commission my own epic swords’n’sorcerers fantasy in which everyone has a short back and sides. I can’t bear any longer the sight of actors strolling around in aesthetically displeasing stringy wigs, which are surely the height of impracticability for any warrior, supernatural or otherwise, and make everyone look like a sub-Fabio who managed a term at Lamda before dropping out in unspecified disgrace.