The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Amazon Prime
Ridley ITV | ITV Hub
The Suspect ITV | ITV Hub
Days That Shook the BBC With David Dimbleby BBC Two | iPlayer
How much are you into elf ears? I’m not prying into kinks – just reeling from the reported cost of Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. According to which report you read, it’s anything from $465m to $715m for the first eight-part run of a rumoured five. Either figure makes it the most expensive TV series ever. Why? How? Obviously, there’s “interest” – the trailer had 257m views in the first 24 hours – but for that money, live hobbits should be jumping out of the screen.
Developed by JD Payne and Patrick McKay, and drawing on JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and appendices, The Rings of Power is set during Middle-earth’s Second Age, predating Peter Jackson’s film series by thousands of years. In the opening double episode, the main thread concerns a younger Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) hunting orcs and the titular lord, Sauron, to avenge her murdered brother. To explain her quest, she drones on (and on) like a sanctimonious folk singer to fellow elf Elrond (Robert Aramayo). Alongside elves and orcs there are humans, healers and hobbit-like harfoots, Lenny Henry among them in voluminous silver whiskers.
This being fantasy, even in Lindon, capital of the high elves, everyone is garbed like a medieval fever dream. And… everyone… talks… really… slowly. Quasi-religious themes pulse throughout: clambering up an icy mountain, Galadriel resembles a superannuated Joan of Arc. There are olde worlde maps: Valinor, Eregion et al. I soon become dependent on the hyper-expository voiceover: you need an A-level in orc studies to follow what’s going on.
Just as I’m wearying of resentful humans, mollifying harfoots and elitist elves (it’s like Middle-earth Brexit), everything revs up (spoiler alert): romance, scheming, orc aggro. Galadriel spurns eternal life, plunging into dark oceans to pursue her mission. Elrond travels to the realm of the dwarves, Khazad-dûm, ruled by a shady king (Peter Mullan). A lanky, straggly bearded, Catweazle-like figure dubbed the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) is discovered sprawled in a spitting, fiery pit. Could this be proto-Gandalf?
In the big autumn fantasy-off, Sky Atlantic’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, is the better show. While The Rings of Power is erratically impressive – a visually lush, Tolkien-completist nerd heaven – too often it feels stilted, dated and a mite dull. With six episodes to go, this could change, but it’s difficult to see where all the money went.
Hold me, I’m frightened: Adrian Dunbar is singing. In the new four-part ITV series Ridley, created by Paul Matthew Thompson (Vera) and Jonathan Fisher, Dunbar (Superintendent Ted Hastings in Line of Duty) plays the eponymous troubled, forcibly retired detective who’s recovering from a breakdown (wife and daughter slain in an arson attack meant for him). Dragged back in by a former protege (Bronagh Waugh) to look into the murder of a farmer, Ridley finds it’s linked to an old child abduction case.
He also co-owns a jazz club (so common in isolated northern farming communities) and ends up crooning through a rendition of Richard Hawley’s Coles Corner. Dunbar (who has a real-life musical side hustle) has a decent set of pipes, but I’m not sure this “Singing Detective without the psoriasis?” motif works. It gives the series the ambience of a Pennines-themed vanity project, and Ridley is already struggling. Despite a strong cast (including Elizabeth Berrington), the first of the standalone stories is bogged down with cliches, predictable twists and dialogue so clumpy it falls to the floor in clods: “You can’t solve them all, Ridley.” Dunbar isn’t irrevocably welded to Ted Hastings (see his striking turn in Channel 5’s Blood), but the notes fall flat here.
I’ve never seen Aidan Turner as Poldark, so I wasn’t pining for him strutting in 18th-century britches in the new five-part thriller The Suspect, based on Michael Robotham’s novel.
Turner plays extravagantly bearded clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin, who has recently been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s by his medic friend (Adam James). After heroically rescuing a suicidal cancer patient from a window ledge, O’Loughlin assists two detectives (Shaun Parkes and Anjli Mohindra) in a murder case in which the victim helped stab herself 21 times. However, he’s behaving strangely: the police catch him sneaking another look at the corpse; he fails to mention that one of his patients (Bobby Schofield) is obsessed with number 21, and so on.
In many ways, The Suspect is preposterous: the type of thriller littered with shots of big buildings to reinforce how thrillingly modern it all is. From watching just the opener, I’m certain I’ve spotted the killer. Even Turner’s beard becomes distracting, making him resemble a brooding Chris Bonington. That said, the show is pacy, nicely cast (Parkes’s oddball detective; Fleabag’s Sian Clifford wafting around as one of O’Loughlin’s colleagues), and there’s enough invention and disruption to keep things spicy.
At the start of Daniel Bogado’s three-part BBC Two docuseries Days That Shook the BBC With David Dimbleby, our host, moodily lit from the side, tells it straight: “I’m not here to speak for the BBC.” Even though he and his family are tantamount to BBC fixtures and fittings, the erstwhile Question Time presenter states sternly: “My conclusions are my own.”
Future episodes will deal with everything from Iraq to the cancelled Newsnight on Jimmy Savile to race and sexism. The first is a dissection of rifts with government (such as Margaret Thatcher over Northern Ireland). And with royalty, after Martin Bashir’s notorious 1995 Panorama interview with Princess Diana (Dimbleby calls the way it was acquired “underhand, devious, obnoxious”). When Emily Maitlis (recently defected to Global radio) pops up to discuss her 2019 interview with Prince Andrew about Jeffrey Epstein, it’s an intriguing companion piece to her and Dimbers’ recent spat over her claims about government interference at the BBC.
The series is interesting, wide-ranging and far from toothless, though clearly Dimbleby is still Beeb to his core. While others touted as the face of the BBC come and go, Dimbleby is more like the cement.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power ★★★
Ridley ★★
The Suspect ★★★
Days That Shook the BBC With David Dimbleby ★★★
What else I’m watching
University Challenge at 60
BBC Two
As Amol Rajan takes over the chair from Jeremy Paxman, this documentary looks at 60 years of the show, from Bamber Gascoigne onwards. Will underprepared students quake in quite the same way again?
The Capture
BBC One
In the second series of Ben Chanan’s surveillance techno-thriller, software freakery and espionage are only the start of it. Holliday Grainger and Ben Miles star, with Paapa Essiedu joining the cast.
Married at First Sight UK
E4
Another batch of couples lunge for the elusive happy ever after on the returning addictive reality show that (deliciously) shames all those who watch it, even more than those who appear on it. Sorry, not sorry.
This article was amended on Monday 5 September. A previous version incorrectly attributed House of the Dragon to Netflix; in fact, it’s a Sky Atlantic production.
