TV & Showbiz

The Witcher: Blood Origin has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in history

While it's definitely not going to go down as groundbreaking fantasy, it seems a lot of people are just upset about the wider Witcher drama.

Danny Jones Danny Jones - 28th December 2022

The Witcher: Blood Origin, the brand-new spin-off based on the wider Witcher books and serving as a prequel to the mainline series, has managed to earn the worst Rotten Tomatoes score ever. Yikes.

Launching on Christmas Day, the new mini-series takes place more than a thousand years before the Netflix show, the games and original books.

The expanded lore of the popular dark and gory fantasy world is vast and fiendishly studied by die-hards, so a show diving into that should be a no-brainer, right?

Well, sadly, through a combination of seemingly genuine bad reviews and people simply being outraged that the main Witcher series no longer features its star, it looks like the new show is being heavily review-bombed.

witcher blood origin worst rotten tomatoes score ever
Despite being currently sat at 33% and 10%, its audience score dropped at low as 8%. (Credit: Rotten Tomatoes)

In case you were unaware of some of the latest blockbuster shenanigans happening in Hollywood over the last few weeks, Geralt of Rivia himself, Henry Cavill, recently stepped away from the show to reportedly prioritise on training for his return as Superman.

However, shortly after, it was announced by new DC Studios chairmen James Gunn and Peter Safran that they were dropping the 39-year-old actor as they hoped to pursue a new star to take on the role — you know, the same one he’d just stepped away from his reported £350,000-an-episode deal to focus on.

Yes, we know he’s a millionaire, but die-hard Henry stans obviously felt terrible for him, leaving one dream job for another beloved franchise that essentially helped put both himself and modern DC movies on the map, only to find out that he was no longer needed.

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Furthermore, fans are now speculating that Cavill quit The Witcher after two highly-successful and well-paying seasons following disputes with the showrunners. A relative on-set expert as a genuine lover of the books and the games, Cavill is said to have struggled to “see eye to eye with the producers”.

Speaking to Hollywood Reporter, the Man of Steel and Mission: Impossible – Fallout star said “the toughest part for me was finding that balance between the showrunners’ vision and my love for the books”, even going on to add that “some of the writers were not [interested] or actively disliked the books and games, even actively mocking the source material.”

If this is to be believed then it’s no wonder that showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich, who is also overseeing the Blood Origin spin-off, seems to have annoyed not only those who love Henry Cavill but now Witcher fans in general.

While plenty of the Rotten Tomatoes reviews limit themselves to calling out those involved in the production for their ‘incompetence’ and ‘lack of respect’, the online consensus beyond the popular review aggregator seems to be that the writing simply isn’t up to snuff.

As always, it’s worth watching and forming your own opinion before letting other people’s takes colour your own impressions but it’s fair to say it isn’t looking good for the future of the franchise’s TV adaptations.

Whether the negativity is being largely driven by review-bombing by the Henry Cavill faithful or not, it looks unlikely that there’ll be a resolution as Liam Hemsworth has already been named as the replacement for the main character, Geralt.

Moreover, since Cavill left/was dropped from both projects, he is once again being tipped to play an equally iconic pop culture protagonist in particular. Have a guess…

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Featured Image — Netflix

TV & Showbiz

BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Do you need to sort your life out?

We get that this may sound like a pretty brutal and upfront question to ask, but don’t shoot the messenger, it’s technically the BBC asking it, as producers are currently on the hunt for messy people who could do with ‘sorting their life out’ to take part in the new series of one of its hit TV shows – and they’re encouraging Greater Manchester residents to apply.

While the title of the show may, quite literally, be Sort Your Life Out, we promise it’s not as harsh as it seems, as in reality, it’s just offering you a helping hand to tidy up.

That’s right, if you would you like your home to be totally transformed by none other than Stacey Solomon and her expert team, then through a life-changing declutter, supersize spring clean, and some ingenious carpentry solutions to top things off, you could bring some job back to where you live.

The BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series / Credit: BBC | FreerangeStock

Stacey and her expert team of organising fanatics can help you let go of the things you don’t need, and streamline what you do.

Plus they’ll also help to create space-saving storage and put systems in place to save you time and money in the future.

“Whether you have a new baby on the way, want to run a business from home, find it hard to let go of sentimental items or just want to create calm in the chaos, we’d love to hear from you,” producers said in a casting call on the BBC website.

Does this process sounds like something you could benefit from then? Producers of the hit show are looking for families or shared households to take part in a potential future series.

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Find out more and apply to Sort Your Life Out on the BBC website here.

Featured Image – BBC

TV & Showbiz

Some Oasis fans are only just discovering who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to

Danny Jones Danny Jones Noel Gallagher wrote Cast No Shadow about Oasis

Die-hard Oasis fans typically pride themselves on knowing the most intricate details about the band and its history, from where the first demos were recorded and when, to how Peggy Gallagher takes her tea, but we were surprised to learn that many don’t know who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to.

Fans are already queuing up outside Heaton Park ahead of the Manc band’s massive homecoming, but we’d be curious to quiz how many of them know the story behind the track taken from Oasis’ seminal sophomore album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

It seems that until very recently, even some of the most avid Britpop fans were unaware that the song was written with another icon of the genre and local music legend in mind: Richard Ashcroft.

While claiming it was written about him would be too reductive, and Noel Gallagher himself has openly clarified this, he has also regularly made it known that the tune and some of the lyrics, in particular, act as somewhat of an ode to the Wigan wordsmith.

The elder Gallagher brother has long maintained a deep level of admiration for Ashcroft, citing him as one of the best singer-songwriters he’s ever come across, and regularly felt like both he and The Verve were not given the recognition they deserved at the time.

As touched upon briefly in the clip above, Noel dedicated the track to his friend Richard around the time that he split from his bandmates and began writing solo material, much of which has gone on to become beloved by countless Brits, certainly here in the North and Greater Manchester.

The now 58-year-old Oasis songwriter believes the ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, ‘A Song for the Lovers’ and ‘They Don’t Own Me’ writer, just to name a very small but stellar sample size, was overlooked for far too long and, to some degree, still is massively underappreciated.

We tend to agree.

In fact, we think he put it best when he said this in a BBC Radio 1 interview back in 1997: “I don’t write songs about many people – I’ve written songs about him [Liam], I’ve written songs about me mam, I’ve written songs about my wife, I’ve written songs about Richard Ashcroft.”

“That man is a genius, and I tell you what, man, he ain’t doing it for himself: he’s doing it for me. He has got to be a better songwriter than me, and in return, I’ve got to write better songs than him. That’s what it’s about.”

‘Cast No Shadow’ also led to one of the most beautiful but subtle pieces of art you can find anywhere in Manchester – a personal favourite of ours, we’ll confess.

Noel has revealed on multiple occasions that when he first played and revealed that he’d dedicated ‘Cast No Shadow’ to Ashcroft, Richard himself was left nearly ‘in tears’.

Speaking to The Guardian back in 2010, just a year after Oasis parted ways on the painful night in Paris, Ashcroft himself confessed: “I can’t work out if he means I’m a witch, vampire or just incredibly emaciated and thin cos, you know, I haven’t really got enough body mass to cast a shadow?”

You’d have to ask the ‘Champagne Supernova’ creator himself, but he’s said that while written directly about him, it is a tribute to his “genius”, and when his friend and fellow Greater Mancunian artist finally got his number one for ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, he said he was “the happiest man in the world.”

His love for The Verve as a whole still remains, too, insisting that just like Liam’s love for The Stone Roses’ John Squire, he believes lead guitarist Nick McCabe is still “one of the best” he’s ever seen.

The Live ’25 reunion has don’t plenty to reignite and an already firm love affair with one of the biggest bands there’s ever been, and it’s also encouraged a whole new generation and demographic of fans to dig further down into the various facets of being Oasis fans involves. Exhibit B…

Explaining the ‘Poznań’ and why Oasis fans are doing it at their Live ’25 reunion tour gigs

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Featured Images — manc_wanderer (via Instagram)/Simon Q (via Flickr)

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