The Witcher

So, you want to write a television series? 

You’ve come upon an idea that you like. You’ve either dreamed it up yourself or found something you think could work on screen. Books are fun. Magazine articles seem to be all the rage in Hollywood these days (see: Hustlers, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). Heck, Netflix might even green-light your idea to adapt the music of Dolly Parton into an eight episode schmaltzfest.

Now the first thing you need to do is write your pilot. Traditionally, this first episode of a series, does a lot of heavy lifting. You’ll need to introduce all your major players and clearly define their relationships to one another. You’ll need to establish the premise of the show in a way that’s clear and comprehensible to an audience. You’ll need to demonstrate the “why” of the show. If you’re adapting a novel, comic book, or video game (or all three), you need to ask yourself if it’s something that will stand on its own or would be confusing to anyone who doesn’t know the source material. 

There’s other stuff you need to work out too – like character arcs and worldbuilding, pacing and tone, diversity and audience surrogates – but mostly, you’ll need to make sure your story is compelling enough for people to want to come back for the next episode.

Things you’ll want to avoid: characters who are defined by their quirks instead of actual human attributes, extraneous story elements that serve no clear purpose, large chunks of exposition that are bogged down by patois and gobbledygook, and, I cannot stress this enough, meandering plotlines that detract from the core narrative.

What you really don’t want to do is produce what is essentially an eight-hour pilot, which takes place at a pace that is unnecessarily slow, full of silly names and digressive exposition, based on material that you’re so invested in and in love with that you forget to explain it to everyone else.

One of the consequences of Netflix’s approach in releasing every episode of a series at once is a certain storytelling hubris. This lack of discipline stems from the idea that each season is a singular narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, and should thus be judged as a whole and not by its individual components. This isn’t a new phenomenon (see: The Wire, Babylon 5, etc.) but one that has taken on new meaning in this era of binge watching. The assumption is that audiences are willing to put in the time and are therefore happy to endure some level of self-indulgence on the part of the show’s creators.

This may have been true with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Back when such cutting-edge content was the sole purview of HBO and Showtime, and the idea of not having to wait week-to-week to find out what happens next was still novel. These days, given the sheer amount of quality content that’s being produced and released on a daily basis, given how spoilt we are for choice, no one has that kind of time, patience, or level of commitment. Not anymore. These days, you’ve got to go back to winning people over, one episode at a time.

(This is why shows like Watchmen and The Mandalorian work so well. Besides having individual episodes that are exceptionally well constructed, being appointment television means that they also give people time to breathe.)

Take, for example, the pilot to Game of Thrones. From the outset, the viewer has a good idea as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. All the characters have names that are easy to pronounce. There is magic, and dragons, and White Walkers, but the show never gets bogged down in such detail, relying instead on sex, politics, and the human condition to drive the narrative. It is a brilliant example of how to set up a genre piece and make it appeal to a wider audience. 

The Game of Thrones comparison is apt given how everyone is looking to fill that particular void in our viewing schedules. HBO is hedging its bets on more Game of Thrones. Amazon has its hands on the rights to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. But all of these are still years away. The Witcher, being the first out of the gate, has a lot to live up to. 

It doesn’t.

The Witcher
Netflix, Season 1, 8 Episodes
Showrunner: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
Writers: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, Jenny Klein, Beau DeMayo, Declan de Barra, Sneha Koorse, Haily Hall, and Mike Ostrowski
Cast: Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan, Joey Batey, MyAnna Buring, Mahesh Jadu, Mimi Ndiweni, Eamon Farren, and Anna Shaffer