Gaby Solly

Love the books and Peter Jackson’s trilogy but this is a twee, boring, over-produced knock-off job. I don’t care about any of the characters nor the storylines except possibly ‘the Stranger’ and his journey with the harfoots. The soundtrack is mostly over the top leaving no space for subtle plot development, and the lavishly financed art production has created a plastic pastiche of Middle Earth and beyond. Squeaky clean costumes, lego ‘hair-dos’, clunky dialogue and cheesy action, all too neat and tidy and ‘unreal’ in a bad way. Impossible to get lost in the drama and ever forget these are ‘actors’ wearing lots of make up and hairspray on an electrically lit set with smoke machines puffing through perfectly splintered doors. Three and a half episodes is as much as I can bare and bad enough to make me write my first ever review. I’ve no problem with the diverse cast nor with the concept of extrapolating from the original LotR material, but I do have issues with Amazon spending such an obscene amount of money on this tripe rather than paying its workers properly.