Extremely bad-ass fights and hilariously playful swearing make this drama lots of fun – plus it’s only four episodes long. Everyone’s a winner!
elcome to the resistance! Perhaps we ought not to look primarily to fantasy shows on streaming services for tips on how to combat authoritarianism, but you take what you can get. After
on Disney+, with its comprehensive guide to grassroots rebellion in the Star Wars universe, now The Witcher: Blood Origin maps out how to fight back when The Man has pointy ears., we go back, back, back to 1,200 years before the time of Geralt of Rivia – and if you don’t know who that is, it matters not.
Before long, Éile is assembling a diverse gang of outcasts, loners and cleaver-swinging mercenaries, former enemies united now against a bigger common foe, for an assault on the palace. Within the walls of the capital, meanwhile, a young princess called Merwyn is undergoing an awkward coming of age. She feels she is bound for greatness, but to realise her destiny she will have to navigate a court full of men bent on assuming absolute power and wielding it nefariously.
Blood Origin is strong on the personal mechanics of autocracy, with Lenny Henry leading that side of the drama as Balor, a scheming druid whose advocacy of a let-them-starve austerity government hides a deep-seated personal inadequacy.
When we learn why Meldof’s blood-soaked instrument of death is called Gwen and why she talks to it, however, it is one of many moments where Blood Origin thoughtfully fills in the grief and trauma any band of survivors is likely to carry. Sagas about vengeful tribes colonising each other don’t always have a very conscientious eye for what it’s like to be on the wrong end of oppression, but Blood Origin does: “Your world is built on our bones,” says Meldof to one of her unlikely new allies.