James Duncan Prewett

It's a little confusing that every review seems to consider this either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad; it pretty much embodies the concept of "meh". If you like "The Rings of Power", you'll like it. It's the same show. If you think we're in a pretty good time for TV at the moment, you'll like it. It's the same as most genre shows so far this decade. You'll get to see the cameos from other works that had more of an impact on you, and you'll get to go "oh, it's the thing!" when that happens; if this delights you, you'll be delighted. This may in fact be the one modern requirement that it actually does excel at somewhat. It has a contrived mystery box and the same twist every single show has done since around 2015; if you find this formula comforting, it'll be a real joy. If you're bored by it; yeah, you'll be bored. But not especially bored, and to the credit of the writers, they seem aware enough that this central skeleton is an underwhelming cliché and so make sure to always have other things to look at, which isn't always the case. The fight scenes are decent and the characters, while the same archetypes as in everything, aren't an especially good or bad lot; they embody these standard types perfectly adequately in all cases. No need for hype or anti-hype; you'll mostly forget you ever saw it within a week, but it's not the worst way to pass a spare hour while it's on and it's really difficult, on it's own internal terms, to see why it upsets people so much.