The third series of The Witcher arrived on Netflix this week. It should really be called The Witchest, going by my personal rule of threes (Witch, Witcher, Witchest). However, the word “witcher” in this fantasy realm is not an adjective but a noun. Being a “witcher”, you see, is a job in this high-concept fictional realm, alongside other no-nonsense jobs such as “mage” and “bard” and “king”, all with high-points courses that you can probably still do at Trinity College Dublin.
Specifically, a witcher is a kind of specialised exterminator who can be called out to deal with all your pest-control problems: your basilisks, your golems, your run-of-the-mill wyverns. If you have any of these issues a witcher will turn up, scratch his chin, do a sum on parchment and give you a competitive quote. (We’re trying to get new gutters in our house, and the process is similar.)
In an era when the economic model of Netflix is beginning to look about as robust as the existence of wyverns, The Witcher, alongside other critically ignored genre hits such as The Umbrella Academy, is probably financing the whole operation. The Witcher is filling the Game of Thrones-shaped void in the hearts of many, probably more than the actual Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon.
The Witcher – based on a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski – follows some of the templates set by that show. The central stylistic innovation of Game of Thrones was to add gratuitous sex, violence and swearwords to a genre long written off as a whimsical diversion for children and nerds. (I’ve been both of these things.) These additions allowed people to imagine that a complicated analysis of modern society was at play, when it was really just an epic yarn about dragons. There’s nothing wrong with being an epic yarn about dragons. But distracting from that fact is a clever trick. I’m pretty sure if you remade Paw Patrol and included the odd evisceration, mass murder and uncanny monster, we would also begin to see it as some sort of commentary on policing and/or dog ownership and declare it a triumph of prestige television.
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The Witcher does something similar by luring the audience in with the magic and whimsy while staking its authenticity on ultraviolence and grotesque beasties. “Here’s a handsome hero,” the show says. “Here’s an embattled chosen one he must protect. Here’s a magic lady who likes to kiss the Witcher. Here’s a quirky self-aware bard. Here’s a scenery-chewing baddie. And now, children, here is the inside of the elf. Yeah, look at the elf guts spilling everywhere. Look at how violent the Witcher is being. Isn’t it, if you think about it, much like wider society?”
Geralt’s adventures are soundtracked by insistent drums, “Celtic” fiddles, Enyaesque synth pads and vaguely eastern wailing. It could win the Eurovision
Henry Cavill plays the Witcher. He has a very normal name that is misspelled – Geralt (pronounced a little like the way TDs pronounce “Renault”). His magical love interest, Yennefer, has a similarly weirdly spelled name. This is the rule for names in fantasy fiction. Everyone’s called things like Richyrd, Kivin or Steeve (probably the names of other witchers). Geralt has limpid pools for eyes, a square jaw that you could park a small car in and the silver hair of a hunk in the “before” part of a Just for Men ad. There is a possibility there’ll be a bit later in the season where a basilisk introduces Cavill to Just for Men in a medieval locker room. He will then emerge with the flowing beige locks of Fabio and the whole long con will be exposed.
Geralt’s adventures are soundtracked by insistent drums, “Celtic” fiddles, Enyaesque synth pads and vaguely eastern wailing. It could win the Eurovision. Many characters spurn contractions, but that’s fair enough, for they are from the olden days, and contractions were invented in the 1990s.
[ Henry Cavill: ‘Ireland taught me how to love the rain’Opens in new window ]
All this said, I find The Witcher much more tightly plotted and fun than Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones sprawled from the start and soon lost focus. There’s a bit more method to the mad sprawl of The Witcher, which began with the episodic adventures of a witcher out on the road, witchering night and day for pay. (This could be the theme of the aforementioned Eurovision song.) As this happened, a rich and complex world built up around him – a world of thrones to be gamed and lords to be ringed – but it has never lost the episodic simplicity of the core story: Geralt wanders around forests and CGI buildings, battling grotesque and horrific demons, forming unlikely alliances and writing efficient invoices inclusive of VAT.
And throughout it all Henry Cavill wears a frowny expression of determined stoicism. This is an expression common to the hunky leading man of today. It’s an expression worn by those who spend their days battling invisible monsters that will be added in postproduction. Indeed, an incredibly buff man pretend-fighting a nonexistent monster is as good a metaphor for the 21st-century crisis of masculinity. In a sense we are all this man. But I don’t think that’s the point of the show, in fairness.
Speaking of the crisis of masculinity, The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix) is another popular programme about a hunky careerman who is so invested in his job and, also, his car (a Lincoln) that they are both part of his nickname. A show about a more evolved and psychologically healthy individual would be called something like Family Time Balanced Life Husband. And ChatGPT and the Netflix algorithm are no doubt collaborating on that as we speak.
Ultimately, this David E Kelley production harks back to a simpler television era before visionary shows like David Simon’s The Wire gave TV creators ambitious, weighty notions. In The Wire, Simon used the generic crime-drama format to analyse the destruction of the United States’ institutions and the unequal ways that deprivation plays out across society. Refreshingly, in The Lincoln Lawyer, Kelley uses the generic crime-drama format to analyse the ways that the Lincoln Lawyer is a pretty cool dude who fights crime good.
It is said of The Wire that its true hero is the American city. The true hero of The Lincoln Lawyer is a lawyer who owns a Lincoln. The only way it could conceivably be even more than what it says on the tin would be if he were also Abraham Lincoln’s lawyer, unfrozen, like Captain America, to fight 21st-century crime. (Another project for ChatGPT/the Netflix algorithm?) That said, The Lincoln Lawyer is zippy, low-stakes fun. He fights crime good. He wears nice suits and he never once makes me think about the working man under the yoke of capitalism. Everyone loves the Lincoln Lawyer, even his two ex-wives. Although they might love him more if he were, in fact, Family Time Balanced Life Husband. If anyone wants to buy this bit of valuable IP, email me at the usual address.
