The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

“The first 10 minutes of the opening episode set a fantastically busy, robust pace and tone. It begins calmly and beautifully, with a very young Galadriel sailing a paper ship in “the undying lands” of Valinor. Then it puts its foot down sharply, racing through centuries of history and war and, crucially, the overthrow of the dark lord Morgoth…There are hints from the start that decay is in the air and it does not take long for those hints to grow into sirens, bellowing out warnings at great volume. When it gets frightening, it is genuinely scary. Towards the end of episode two, it is breathlessly tense and far more gruesome than I anticipated.I have a couple of small reservations. On occasion, there is a whiff of “smell-the-fart” acting, which is perhaps hard to avoid when every other line is a poker-faced aphorism such as: “A dog may bark at the moon, but he cannot bring it down.” The pace, too, is a little all-or-nothing. It either races through astonishing action scenes, or lingers on a single conversation or meaningful look. But these are quibbles and, in the end, the spectacle wins. This is enormously enjoyable TV, a cinematic feast.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Fans of hobbits should note that the show takes place so far before The Hobbit that hobbits aren’t even hobbits yet. Instead, they’re a tight knit group of “harfoots”, an evolutionary predecessor to the creatures we know and love. It’s the harfoots that really make The Rings of Power work. Maybe it’s just the reassuring presence of British comedy icon Lenny Henry among the cast (playing elder harfoot Sadoc Burrows), but these pastoral scenes manage to capture the magic of the late-Eighties BBC version of The Chronicles of Narnia, an enchanting series which never had quite this budget. There’s another couple of stand-out performances from Megan Richards and Markella Kavenagh as the young harfoots” 
Kevin E Perry, The Independent 

“Rather than following the relatively well-known stories about the gang heading to Mordor this series takes as its source material the mildly interminable appendices to the third book, which is not really a story at all, but more of a pretend history of what had happened a few thousand years earlier. Helpfully elves are immortal, barring disaster, so there is some scope for familiar characters. What with said appendices being heavy on chronology but low on detail, though, this show is dominated by characters made up afresh.”
Hugo Rifkind, The Times

“The sweep and scope are in place. Middle-earth looks lovely, with directorial nods to the earlier films – epic tracking shots as characters run over hills, gorgeous elven cities, gruesome monsters – without it feeling like a tribute act. But the opening episodes are little more than an extended “meet the contestants” montage, introducing a dizzying array of characters, concepts and possible plots, but almost nothing in the way of actual story. Maybe two hours of summary and introduction is the price we have to pay for 50 hours in Middle Earth…it’s good to know Galadriel will be kicking around for a while, because Clark is one of the best things in the series. Her Galadriel delivers elf-speak that doesn’t make you want to throw an axe at her head…Still, by the end of the second episode he has embarked on something resembling a plot: sent to help persuade the dwarves to build a large tower furnace by “next spring”. Why such a short time-frame? That kind of poor planning will always give your contractors the whip hand.Still, we are grateful for anything resembling a quest. For all its diversions, The Lord of the Rings had a single, simple plot: get the ring in the fire! There’s less of that here. The scene-setting keeps being interrupted by action sequences, like a pointless elf versus dwarf stone-breaking exercise.”
Ed Cumming, The Telegraph

“Turkey is not the word. No turkey, however bloated and stupid, could ever be big enough to convey the mesmerising awfulness of Amazon’s billion dollar Tolkien epic. This is a disaster dragon – plucked, spatchcocked, with a tankerload of Paxo stuffed up its fundament, roasted and served with soggy sprouts. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is so staggeringly bad, it’s hilarious. Everything about it is ill-judged to a spectacular extreme. The cliche-laden script, the dire acting, the leaden pace, the sheer inconsistency and confusion as it lurches between styles – where do we start? Whoever thought that was a wise buy must have been smashed out of their minds on miruvor, the elvish liquor. There’s no doubt we can see the budget. It casts a throbbing glow over the screen like a chestful of gold. Ultra-high definition computer graphics paint ivory cities in mountain passes and conjure gigantic monsters in palaces of dark magic. But magnificent visuals are meaningless if nobody knows who the audience is meant to be. And it’s impossible to guess whether The Rings Of Power is meant for children, for hardcore fans or for general viewers – because it fails them all.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The dialogue’s often clunky, with cod mysticisms like “the wind that seeks to blow out a fire may cause it to spread” swiftly followed by Elrond being told “Celebrimbor has a new project; you’ll be working with him”, like an intern being assigned to the font redesign committee. And for those more used to the Game of Thrones universe, where multiple power blocs vie for supremacy and flawed characters exhibit varying degrees of ambition, loyalty, pragmatism and idealism, this is a world of good guys and bad guys which may seem a bit twee and old-hat to fantasy agnostics.”
Jeff Robson, The i