The Witcher, Netflix’s highly anticipated adaptation of the popular fantasy series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, seems prepared for the inevitable Game of Thrones comparisons and is leaning heavily into them. There’s political intrigue. There’s gratuitous nudity. There’s graphic violence.

• But The Witcher has the added benefit of being loaded with monsters, elves and magic.
• Seriously, there is casual sorcery and gigantic swamp spiders all over the place. 
• The Witcher is well-constructed, well acted, and refreshingly straightforward in its storytelling, spinning an epic fantasy yarn full of familiar fantasy tropes blanketed by grim European folklore that casts a shadow on all the familiarity like a particularly sinister set of blackout curtains.

The show takes place on the Continent, a vaguely European medieval land not unlike Tolkien’s Middle-earth, if the Hobbits had their wellwater poisoned by the leering scumbaggery of George R. R. Martin’s Westeros. Like Westeros, it’s made up of several kingdoms that seem to always be teetering on the precipice of all-out war. Complicating all this tension is the fact that the Continent is infested with monsters, which is where Witchers come in. Witchers are monster hunters, humans that have been mutated by magic to have enhanced abilities. Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), the only handsome Witcher to have ever existed, is just trying to make is way through the Continent plying his trade and minding his business, but winds up getting entangled in human conflicts more than he’d care to.

Meanwhile, war finally explodes between the nations of Nilfgaard and Cintra, forcing Princess Ciri of Cintra (Freya Allan) to go on the run through the Continent’s dangerous warzones and enchanted forests to avoid getting captured by the Nilfgaardian’s commander, whose single-minded pursuit suggests he’s got some kind of nefarious plan for her up his sleeve. And in another part of the Continent, a deformed peasant named Yennefer (Anya Chalorta) is taken in by a mysterious order of mages and forced to train under a cruel rectress to learn how to control magic.

Right off the bat, The Witcher is an impressive offering. The scale of the show is massive, and Netflix has put enough resources into its production that everything looks quite good. Every interior, from a random village tavern to a grand castle hall to the solarium of a magic tower, is convincingly detailed and effectively staged. Battle scenes feature what seems like hundreds of extras. Shot mostly in Eastern Europe, the Continent’s exteriors look appropriately sprawling and vaguely mythical. While it doesn’t have the budget of Game of Thrones, The Witcher manages to create an enormous fantasy world that looks and feels totally believable, and is on par with anything GoT pulled off in its early seasons.

Obviously, The Witcher is about a monster hunter, so there are going to be some fantasy beasts to contend with. The show uses a good mix of visual and practical effects to create its numerous creatures and monstrosities, and in general the end results look great. A few of the monsters are truly horrifying, particularly the Striga, a cursed undead child born from a dead woman’s womb that Geralt is forced to battle in a creepy abandoned castle. And a great deal of care was taken to make sure the fight scenes were fun and exciting without looking cheesy. In particular, the swordplay in The Witcher is truly awesome, and Cavill clearly put in the work to make sure he looked believable as a wandering mercenary.

Geralt is a man of very few words, and the words he does choose to say are gruff, scowly and sometimes telling:

“There is never a second opportunity to make a first impression.”

But Cavill is able to take what’s on the page and turn it into an unexpectedly charming performance, a great deal of which comes through in what he doesn’t say. His facial expressions, body language, and surprisingly versatile use of the phrase 'hmm' result in some genuinely funny moments that somehow also manage to do a lot of work to inform his character. There’s an ironic playfulness to him that’s always detectable even though Geralt never fully lets his guard down.

The show’s main weakness is that things can occasionally become confusing, especially when characters make casual references to people or places that we aren’t quite familiar with yet, or when anyone launches into a discussion of the politics and relationships of all the different kingdoms of the Continent. In fairness, it’s a common problem to have in a genre show attempting to do any amount of world-building. Luckily, it quickly becomes clear that all we really need to remember is that the kingdom of Nilfgaard are the bad guys.

For all its massive scale, The Witcher is a surprisingly small story centered around three appealing main characters. It’s a classic fantasy tale about war and magic and prophecy, with grotesque monsters, supernatural detective work, and political intrigue thrown into the mix. It’s all a bit silly, but no more so than Game of Thrones ever was. Netflix has already greenlit a second season, and if it is as relentlessly entertaining as this one has been, I hope they make seven more.

In fact, I'll toss a coin to that!