The Witcher: Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones looks stunning and immersive

The Witcher is Netflix's epic fantasy series in the vein of HBO's Game of Thrones. The streaming service is upping the ante with this Lauren Schmidt creation. Starring Henry Cavill, Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra, The Witcher is based on short stories and novels by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Henry Cavill plays the role of Geralt of Rivia, a witcher. The witchers are itinerant monster hunters for hire who are trained at a young age in special schools to be flawless swordsmen. They are made to drink arcane elixirs and potions to mutate them into something not wholly human. Due to the mutations. their hair turn white and eyes acquire the hue and quality of felines. While the witchers are supposed to be incapable of emotion and even a conscience, Geralt is an exception.

While Geralt has faced the deadliest monsters this world has to offer, the worst, he realises, are always the ones wearing the human skin. Our hero is trying to make his place in a world where people prove to be more evil than the monsters.

Freya Allan plays the role of a young girl called Ciri whose destiny gets intertwined with Geralt and Anya's Yennefer of Vengerberg, a sorceress with a dark past.

Henry Cavill was a huge fan of the popular open-world RPG video-game series by the Polish developer CD Projekt Red that the books inspired. He began to lobby for the role of Geralt as soon as he heard a Netflix series was in development.

The production quality on the series appears to be magnificent and worthy of the tale the producers want to tell. The series was shot in four countries -- Hungary, Spain, Austria and Poland -- across seven months. Production designer Andrew Laws says, “We obviously wanted to honor the Slavic roots of the story, but we also strove to give the audience something new. We drew inspiration from medieval towns, such as the old walled city of Nuremberg. We looked at architecture from Asia, from the Middle East, Egypt, Japan, India. We have incorporated a lot of these global influences into the story environment.”

Anya Chalotra's Yennefer is a fresh departure from the women characters that populate most of fantasy fiction. She is a very capable sorceress who is frequently involved in dalliances, including with Geralt. While the books only touched upon her past, the series is going to cover it in more detail.

Jaskier (Joey Batey), Dandelion in the English translation of the books, is a bard and friend of Geralt.