Julian Schoffel

I have loved Lord of the Rings since I first read the books 40+ years ago. However I never really managed to wade through the Silmarillion so I don't consider myself to be one of the most ardent Tolkien purists. I had high hopes for this TV series tempered with the usual trepidation and cynicism that increasingly seems to accompany my advancing years. First off - I have no problem with the diverse cast. For example I think the actor who plays Disa (Durin's wife) has real charisma and the actor who plays Arondir has the brooding presence to potentially develop an interesting character. Unfortunately they are let down by the poor writing which brings me to some of my major gripes with this series... Correct me if I am wrong but by the second age Galadriel was already thousands of years old - why have they made her into a petulant, pouty, cantankerous teenage-like character? Why not invent an original character instead? And is it just me or do the hobbits, er harfoots come across as twee, syrupy and generally hard to stomach? While some of the scenery and effects are quite magnificent - you suddenly get a really bad CGI character like the warg which looks like he was cobbled together by the same team who worked on the Scorpion King. The action set pieces also look dreadful - Galadriel is in no way convincing as a warrior and some of the other fights just have a very dated TV action show feel. However the main problem so far with this show is the writing. I have watched 4 episodes and I don't really care about any of the characters. As someone else mentioned in an online article I have found myself rooting for the orcs and hoping Sauron will appear soon to wreak havoc and break the tedium. The orcs, by the way, are the only things so far which feel, look and sound right. Oh aside from the show's music which I also quite like. Prime made the mistake of putting Peter Jackson's films in my suggested viewing list. After re-watching the Fellowship of the Ring for the first time in 20 years I was astonished by how good it was. It literally wipes the floor with Amazon's series (what we have of it so far at least) in all departments: it looks better, has loads of heart, some great dialogue, amazing actors and an otherworldly ambience that Rings of Power fails to manifest. Why they didn't hire Peter Jackson in some capacity beggars belief. If this show doesn't greatly improve over the next couple of episodes I can't see myself continuing to watch.

Having read all of the books and played the games I had high hopes for this series and after watching the entire first 8 episodes of season 1 I haven't been disappointed. Henry is great as Geralt - he absolutely nails it in my opinion. The locations and production values are solid and most of the other actors/performances are top notch - standouts being the druid, Yennifer, Ciri - not sure about the bard Dandelion (why don't they call him Dandelion in the show I wonder btw?) - the guy playing him does a pretty solid job but still room for improvement but maybe I am just being persnickety because he is one of my favourite characters in the books. A few negatives - some of the CGI is a bit dubious but if the show gets a massive following I can see them allocating the necessary resources to lift this up a bit - I was especially sad to see such a dodgy looking gold dragon as this was one of my favourite Witcher short stories. I think they also messed up that particular episode a bit - it was quite different to the source material. I can see that some people who aren't familiar with the source material may struggle a bit trying to work out what the hell is going on - especially the way they go backwards and forwards in time in the first season. So they may want to try and clarify things a bit more for those new to the Witcher universe. Anyway overall I loved it and look forward to many more seasons!