diff -up rpmlint-rpmlint-1.10/Pkg.py.rpm_surrogate_escaped_utf8 rpmlint-rpmlint-1.10/Pkg.py
--- rpmlint-rpmlint-1.10/Pkg.py.rpm_surrogate_escaped_utf8	2019-06-13 12:17:33.339937352 +0200
+++ rpmlint-rpmlint-1.10/Pkg.py	2019-06-13 13:37:37.076702548 +0200
@@ -164,12 +164,20 @@ def is_utf8(fname):
 
 
 def is_utf8_bytestr(s):
-    try:
-        s.decode('UTF-8')
-    except UnicodeError:
-        return False
-    return True
-
+    if isinstance(s, str):
+        try:
+            s.encode("utf8")
+        except UnicodeEncodeError:
+            return False
+        else:
+            return True
+    else:
+        try:
+            s.decode('UTF-8')
+        except UnicodeError:
+            return False
+        else:
+            return True
 
 def to_unicode(string):
     if string is None: