Bilal Zafar on watching The Witcher with the doctor

Written by: Si Hawkins

Best known these days for his lockdown-launched Twitch shows about a misguided video-game football manager, Bilal Zafar also has a very different passion: Henry Cavill with a mullet. Or, rather, the eponymous hero Cavill plays in Netflix's sword-and-sauciness series The Witcher, which has just returned for its second season. So much so that he and fellow comic Ed Patrick started a podcast: Dandelion, The Witcher and The Wardrobe. Their second series should be with us soon, he reckons.

It's not wildly off-brand for Bilal as The Witcher is a big video game too. And a book, and now a comic book (do check out Jeremy Wilson's lovely variant cover art on the recent Fading Memories series) and probably action figures too - but that video game was the starting point for Zafar, after a drama of his own.

He's doing Witcher gaming streams now too, but our chat happened not long after the TV show's first season aired...

How did you end up wading into Witcher-world?

I'm obsessed by the game, The Witcher 3. Actually it's a very special game to me because I got very severe pneumonia at the end of Edinburgh Fringe 2017, like very bad, I went into hospital for two weeks, then I couldn't work for two months, I couldn't do anything.

I'd had a very disappointing Edinburgh as well, so I got that game and just sat there playing it for a couple of months, and it's quite important to me.

Then Ed Patrick, another comedian, who's also a doctor - he is obsessed with Witcher to a ridiculous degree, he loves the soundtrack to all the games, he's read the books. So what we decided to do was team up for an episode-by-episode review of the new Netflix show.

Which might have been hugely disappointing, I'd imagine.

I mean, I think it was disappointing, to be honest. I don't think it's a great show. It could get good, but it was underwhelming. I mainly talked about the positives.

Was it always likely to underwhelm, after the game?

Yeah, the problem is, the game is very fun and quite silly in places, and it's such a brilliant world that exists in The Witcher, it really works, but the show was not enough of that going on. And also the CGI isn't great, the monsters, it looks like a Netflix show, not a movie.

And I've not seen Game of Thrones properly, but I know when you see a dragon in that, it looks like a dragon, from a film. Then you see this and it's a very fake monster. And he looks ridiculous with his hair.

It's quite a look. But you kept quite positive.

Yeah, but I was honest about things I didn't like, and what could be improved, I didn't say 'I hate this episode!' The second series went on hold because of lockdown, but I'll probably do that series as well; I edit it, so it takes up time. Maybe if I could get Ed to do that side of things - he's a doctor though...

He's good at cutting.

Exactly! Very good. Its quite funny actually, there's one episode, it's horrible, one of the characters has a hysterectomy, and Ed, because he's a doctor, pointed out all the problems with that scene. Which was great!

So that was good, and I am proud of it. But it's too niche. We expected [the series] to take off like Game of Thrones, we thought 'it's such a huge game, it's gonna be huge!' But it's not.

For updates on Bilal's Witcher projects follow him on Twitter: @Zafarcakes