Inconsistencies between book and movie or tv series happen very often. If you’re watching ‘based on’ show they are always present. But that doesn’t mean they need to hit you in the face with a brick. And that’s what happened with The Witcher show. The differences between the show and a book are so unpleasantly striking, they make you feel real pain. That’s why this part of the review will be divided into pieces since I want to go through all the episodes one by one.

The Valley of Plenty

This place in books was called Dol Blathanna – in Elder language (elven language) it meant The Valley of Flowers. Now imagine you’re visiting a beautiful old village, a bit like a modern open-air museum. Located in such a breathtaking location that there are not even roads but paths between the huts. There are fields full of ripe golden grain. Between them, green stripes dotted with poppies and cornflowers. Just like blue and red rugs among grain. In the distance you see a beautiful, dense old forest, streams flow somewhere in the area and the air is constantly being cut by a flight of bees and butterflies. The air around is fresh and clean, even the sun heats perfectly. That’s Dol Blathanna in the books. Middle of nowhere, kingdom of farmers, bats, the devil and not much else.

And in the show The Valley consisted of rocks, bits of grain for silvan to hide in, and some more rocks. Oh, and I forgot to mention even more rocks! Where are the flowers? Where are the grain and corn fields? Where is the field of cannabis, the devil’s favourite hiding spot? Where is the fuckin’ “plenty” in that fuckin’ valley of plenty? Perhaps it should be called “The Valley of Bare Rocks”, as there seem to be plenty of them lying around.

Also there is the Dana Meabdh – a unique and beautiful character that appears in this short story:

“Glimpsed she may be during the time of sumor, from the days of Mai and Juyn to the days of October, but most of this haps on the Feste of the Scythe, which ancients would call Lammas. She revealeth herself as the Fairhaired Ladie, in flowers all, and all that liveth followeth her path and clingeth to her, as one, plant or beast.”

Andrew Sapkowski

In the books the elves decided to kill Geralt and Jaskier – perhaps even Torque (the silvan), because he defended them. And it was not Geralt’s power speech or his money that changed their mind. It was the spirit of nature that spoke to elves about passing through the life cycle and about hope. It was that beautiful maiden that entered the fields with young deer and hedgehog escorting her, and a wreath of summer flowers crowning her forehead.

But whatever.. ROCKS – right? And there are the elves… Omg what a sight that was. Flavandrell looked amazing! As if he was a teenager going to Comic-Con in a badly stitched Legolas costume. But I’ll leave the elves to the next chapter when I’ll be writing about races in The Witcher series.

And of course it’s simply impossible to even list the amount of perfectly written humor and jokes that was embedded in this story. Sure we’ve got a pretty good snowman joke. But that’s just one joke! This was a humorous tale of two friends having stupid ass adventure in the middle of nowhere – learning in the process about deeper issues, and giving us hints of an upcoming conflict. And what we’ve got I can just describe by the fraze: “meh…”.

The Golden Dragon

I don’t know…. I guess that poor Villentretenmerth is out of luck when it comes to appearances on a screen. He already suffered when Polish series was released. Up until this day our golden dragon is called “The funniest attempt at animation ever to be created”. 

And now this… I mean – was that even a dragon? It didn’t look like one, that’s for sure. Did the creators watched Game of Thrones? Dragonheart? Or maybe they watched “How to train your dragon”, and thought “Yup that’s it. Let’s paint it golden, and it will work”.

Well it doesn’t. This dragon looks like a chicken. 

The story “Boundary of Possibilities” is probably the worstly prepared story in the whole series. First of all, actor Ron Cook, with all due respect, is too old to play Borch. Because of this, it’s impossible to make a super-interesting conversation thread between Geralt and Borch. In the novel, Borch invited Geralt to a tavern for a very generous meal, which ended in the bathtub, accompanied by the female warriors from Zerrikania. This was the story of two people who just met and decided to share a meal, a conversation and some occasional fun.

During this conversation, we learned a lot about Geralt, his character and views. The subject, which is the heart of the story, was also raised. A thread that was the foundation for a later series of books. We have found that Geralt is sterile because of his mutation. This light and funny dialogue was a favorite part of the story for many, and unfortunately it was completely plucked from all charm. Instead we’ve got some old knight who decided to hire a witcher, nothing personal about that whatsoever.

Then more characters appear. Yennefer, of course, Reavers from Crinfrid, dwarves, and Eyck von Denesle. I don’t even know if I regret that there was no Doregrray. But the way Boholt was treated in the show was just sad.
And what’s’ with these dwarfs that looked like hobbits? What about militia from Hołopole and shoemaker Kozojed, who were the funniest characters in this story.

What’s with this weird climbin on planks, and Borch jumping unto casm? Was that supposed to make us feel sorry or sympathetic for Borch’s character? That’s just dumb. It’s  more annoying than actually interesting or emotional. 

What about characters shifting their allegiances, during the fight with the dragon? Where is the fight in which Yennefer is bound to the carriage and cast spells with her leg, while Jaskier creates a ballad about two tits. I also don’t get this weird thing the creators do with mages fighting with swords. This is not DnD, and the mages in Witcher never had to learn to fight with the sword. Why would they, when they could change 20 people into flamingos with one spell.

All of this seemed to be forced, like they tried to fit this into one episode by force. Creators did not even think about cutting out all those parts about Ciri and just make a good deeper story about hunting for a dragon. Besides in this dumb episode failed to even mentioned who Borch really is – a dragon witcher..