The Witcher Season 1: Welcome to the Continent, You’ll Never Want to Leave

It’s hard enough to make a quality TV show these days without any more added pressure. The market is saturated (and had been even before the streaming wars kicked off), everyone’s attention is divided and folks are less likely to wait out a show to get better. I think about shows we think of as classics that had slow starts and it’s hard to imagine all of those shows would’ve lasted as long as they did if the began in this era. The even taller obstacle for fantasy series is the dubious task of following Game of Thrones. I’m guessing that history may include a very dubious and non-consensus opinion (unlike say a Breaking Bad or The Wire) as plenty of folks believe it failed to stick the landing. But there is no denying that it was the biggest TV phenomenon ever and easily the most successful drama that used fantasy or sci-fi elements while keeping viewers every week. Now that it’s over (and HBO has already cut one of the two prequels it had planned) every network is looking for the next Game of Thrones. Any network not named HBO would benefit from that kind of bombastic fandom as it would probably pay bills for years. The Witcher, debuting for Netflix subscribers on December 20th is not the next Game of Thrones. Which isn’t to say that it can’t be as good. The source material, for my money, is just as strong if not stronger than the collective of George RR Martin’s epic A Song of Fire and Ice. While it has been billed as possibly the next Game of Thrones, it is a wholly diffe…