Parents' Guide to The Witcher

With its medieval magical vibe and complex fantastical storytelling, this arresting drama reads like a Game of Thrones knockoff, but darned if it doesn't actually cast a spell. In a genre that often comes off as thunderingly self-important (is there a weapon or person or geographic location without a vainglorious three-word name in the Lord of the Rings trilogy?), The Witcher's greatest bit of daring is to treat its epic storytelling with a big dash of irony. The puffery-puncturing vibe arrives early, as Henry Cavill's square-jawed smirks make it clear that both actor and character recognize and relish the ridiculousness of monsters and long velvet cloaks and lone swordsmen doomed to roam from town to town on grim missions. But things really kick into gear in the second episode, when Joey Batey shows up as the ebullient bard Jaskier, more or less the comic-relief Donkey to Geralt's Shrek.

What a wonderful character Jaskier is: swishy, mouthy, and relentlessly roughhousing, he joyfully undercuts the solemnity of The Witcher's battles and political drama, often by economically summing up what's taken place in dialogue or song. In an early scene, just after delivering a bit of grievous Elf history, he says "There I go again, just delivering exposition." Ha! It's funny because it's true. Speaking of said Elves, their part of the story gives welcome depth: humans pushed them off their ancestral lands and now they fight relentlessly to keep the tattered remnants of their once-mighty tribe together -- and if that puts viewers in mind of Native people in North America, well, that's no doubt part of the message in a drama which is both entertainingly easy to watch and satisfyingly aligned with the underdogs of its world.