Are we over our obsession with Lord of the Rings in New Zealand yet? Let’s just have a quick look inside Wellington airport ... no, we’re not really, are we? Ever since Peter Jackson’s epic film trilogy cast the nation in the role of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, we’ve rather taken to the stardom that’s came with it, happy to be able to set up movie tours for hobbit-loving tourists, heavily subsidised special effects industries, and jokes about being a small country that’s synonymous with a film franchise on The Simpsons.
So yes, lots of us got a little bit excited when Amazon announced it was filming its new, eye-wateringly expensive Lord of the Rings TV show, The Rings of Power, in New Zealand. And similarly, lots of us were a wee bit aghast when Amazon announced it was ditching these shores and shifting the whole thing to the UK in order to film the second season. So it’s a little bit weird being a New Zealand viewer, now that the first season of the since-departed show has finally arrived. It feels a bit like looking at Facebook photos of a fabulous holiday you once enjoyed with your ex, painfully aware that they’ve since left you and moved to Palmerston North. But there’s some comfort to be taken, because the first couple of episodes suggest that even if we’ve been jilted, we’re still about to be well entertained.
Surely the most magnificent — and possibly only — television adaptation of some appendices ever made, The Rings of Power is set in Middle Earth’s Second Age, thousands of years before Frodo and co’s Third Age, and which Tolkien mostly wrote about in supplemental materials and fastidious family trees, which have been fleshed out for the show. We’re back in the Middle-Earth-day then, but as Tolkien’s elves basically live on forever unless they meet violent ends, there are still a few familiar characters for us to latch on to.
This turns out to be a bit of misplaced optimism though, as the wars rage for centuries before the elves can finally get on top, leaving a now grown-up Galadriel with a dead big brother and a Sauron-sized chip on her shoulder. This is the character in her action-hero days, leading Tomb Raider-like expeditions into remote places in the hunt for Sauron, who she is convinced is still kicking and a threat, long after her fellow elves have concluded he’s been done and dusted. One of these is her friend Elrond (Hugo Weaving in the film trilogy, Robert Aramayo here), who is at this stage more concerned with his ambitions as a poet and political speech writer than he is with ruling kingdoms or leading armies. Despite Galadriel’s Chicken-Littling, Elven king Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker) is happy to put up the “Mission Accomplished” banner, telling her “job done” and sending her back to the homeland. This, unsurprisingly, is not going to take.
Meanwhile — this show will be doing that a bit — elsewhere in the land, proto-hobbit tribe the Harfoots are living an idyllic life of nomadic bucolicism, their contented existence only occasionally interrupted by having to hide their civilisation from outsiders. One chaffs a bit at this lifestyle of blackberry scrumping and floral garland weaving though; young Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), who has a taste for adventure unusual among her cautious people (much in the mould of Bilbo Baggins many years later). And a strange arrival in the land of the Harfoots seems set to deliver her some — but perhaps more than she bargained for.
Meanwhile meanwhile, elven ranger Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) patrols the human-settled region of the Southlands, part of a sort of occupational/police force put in place by the elves, who with their long memories have not forgotten that the humans of the area decided to throw their lot in with Morgoth and Sauron in the battles of some several (human) generations ago. Here rural life seems less bountiful harvest and more bloody hard, and the largest local employer is the “sitting in a grim tavern, looking depressed” industry. There’s little love lost between the humans, who resent the elf presence, and the elves, who still hold the sins of the humans’ great-grandfathers against them. So the feelings obviously blooming between Arondir and Bronwyn, a local human single mum, have a bit of a Romeo and Juliet vibe to them, with further forbidden-love sparks flying when they set off to investigate some portentous happenings near a neighbouring village.
Phew. It’s a lot. In the first two hours of the show tables are being extensively laid, and not just with forks and knives and plates, but butter spreaders and place cards and cake spoons. No-one even mentions the word ‘‘ring’’. But you are left in absolutely no doubt that what this show will be shooting for as it rolls on — 50 hours of TV and a start-to-finish storyline are apparently already planned for — is ‘‘epic’’, with a sprawling cast of characters, a half-a-dozen simultaneous plot threads, and a commitment to at least matching the production values we saw on display in the Jackson films. Indeed, from some of the earliest moments, where Galadriel and her company are making a perilous climb up an ice mountain next to a towering waterfall, it is perfectly clear that Amazon’s approach to the production has been to drive up to it with a dump truck full of money, empty it on the driveway, and tell the people making it ‘‘just go for it’’. It’s spectacular.
The one area in which a little bit of money might have been saved is on casting; you’d be forgiven if you don’t recognise any of the names I’ve just listed in brackets, with no early sign of the big names we often expect in prestige television (although Sir Lenny Henry pops up among the Harfoots). But picking lesser-known, up-and-coming talent across the board seems to have had the happy side-effect of creating a cast of people chosen because they are actually good at acting. Clark’s steely determination and Kavenagh’s line in plucky enthusiasm are early highlights. It won’t be at all surprising if in years to come The Rings of Power produces some new big names by itself.
Despite a lot of pre-release doubt around the show then, about unadaptable material, staying faithful to Tolkien’s work and matching the scope of the much-loved films, The Rings of Power, in the early going anyway, shows every sign of having smashed it out of the park. I ended the two-episode preview immediately wanting more. The production may have departed these shores (and I bet no-one in the UK-shot season two will say ‘‘Rattle your dags’’, a bit of blatant Antipodean flavour that sneaks in here), but at least we still have what looks like it will be some good television to look forward to — even if it might be a bit worse without those shots of Fiordland.
The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are streaming on Prime Video from 1pm today. A new episode will arrive next and each subsequent Friday at 4pm.
