In the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien confessed to the “desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.” 

Latest of those attempting to do the same using the famous Oxford professor’s material is J.D. Payne, one half of Amazon’s Rings of Power show-running team and a member of the Church. 

Due to complicated rights arrangements attached to Tolkien’s work, Payne and his long-time writing partner, Patrick McKay, pitched the media giant a 50-hour epic set in Middle-Earth’s Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings and drawing on the novel’s dense appendices. 

The pressure on Payne and McKay—faced with creating a five-season series with an estimated cost of well over $1 billion for the first season alone, an adaptation of one of the best-selling books of all time, all the while under the sharp-eyed gaze of millions of fans—must be intense. But the first two episodes’ lush score, intricate costumes, luminous sets, color-blind casting, compelling story lines, and painstaking attention to detail seem to promise that all that glitters here will indeed turn out to be gold—Luisa Perkins (now streaming on Amazon Prime with new episodes airing each Friday.)