11 Alternative Shows I Thought of While Watching Rings of Power
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #181. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Elsewhere, here.
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Even if you didn’t know that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings television series was made by people who hadn’t really worked in TV before, you could guess watching the show. The series (which I have seen in its entirety despite my normal ruthlessness in not finishing things) forgets the first and most important rule of the medium which is that, primarily, this is a form in which you enjoy the company of its characters enough to come back every week. This doesn’t mean they’re good people, (Succession, Breaking Bad, Seinfeld) but they are people you have some kind of investment in. Part of that is giving you a sense of who they are very quickly, something Game of Thrones was very good at even on its worst days. That show was not afraid to go broad in its characterizations, and it worked. Those are the mean blonde people. This is the sadist. This family is all pirates. This was also something the Lord of the Rings movies excelled at. Your investment in the whole story works because the first movie slows down in the beginning to allow you time to luxuriate in the shire, getting to know the hobbits and their big wizard friend, so that for the rest of the movies you care both about what they’re protecting and what they encounter. In Rings of Power, on the other hand, everyone is basically noble or evil with little to distinguish them otherwise, so despite some thematic plotting that I think is pretty good actually . . . it’s easier to appreciate on a conceptual level than it is typically enjoyable. As a result, I spend a lot of my time watching it imagining what I would do differently.
11 ALTERNATIVE SHOWS I THOUGHT OF WHILE WATCHING RINGS OF POWER.
1. An adventure series starring the second son of Aragorn, a lad full of the blood of Númenor, but stuck with the knowledge that he will never become king (due to the extraordinary long life of his father, older brother and the pleasures of peacetime Middle-earth). As such he becomes a ranger, facing off against the last remaining pockets of evil. Eventually he forms a rag-tag and diverse fellowship of companions, and the show takes a comedic monster-of-the-week approach, with an overarching plot that explores the politics of post-war Arda. Shelob makes an appearance.
2. An emotional miniseries about the Hobbit resistance during the Scouring of the Shire. Stirring, in the style of Aaron Sorkin or the HBO John Adams Hobbits finding their courage. Hobbits being subjected to the worst indignities. The burning trees. The ale is tapped, their pipeweed taken by the enemy.
3. Gandalf the Gay (Showtime, Sundays at 10pm).
4. A show about the political leadup to the War of the Ring in the lands to the east, following up on one of the most touching details from the books, when Samwise Gamgee comes across a corpse. “It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.” Let’s answer those questions.
5.I was going to say a Gollum show as a joke, but then I remembered they’re actually doing that for some reason.
6. An Outlander type romance about Beren and Lúthien. Star-crossed elf/human love with fabulous outfits and a lot of smut for the wine moms (I can say this now, I just had a baby). This show will cash in on the cottage-core trend and bring about revivals of both embroidery and forest dancing.
7. An adaptation of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books which would be less of a Game of Thrones-style epic and more like a 2000s WB show; like Buffy with a better budget and slightly more serialized storytelling. Girl power! Love triangles! Sword fighting! I would like to be in charge of this show because I’ve figured out how to make the timelines work, and I’d run it along with Moira Walley-Beckett, who wrote Anne with an E (a very special show), and also wrote the best episode of Breaking Bad.
8. A workplace sitcom about Sam’s tenure as Mayor of Hobbiton, trying to drag the town into a more modern, less xenophobic era. “Those dwarves are all right, you see!”
9. A nature documentary about the Ents hunt for the Entwives. Not documentary style, a real documentary.
10. Radagast the Brown. This is actually a resource management game.
11. I think it would be very comforting to have a dark room somewhere in this city – a black box theater room with comfortable recliners and beanbag chairs scattered at random around the floor – a velvet curtain leading outside to snack bar – and in this dark room the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings movies would play on a loop, followed by all the DVD extras (to my shame there are still some of the DVD extras I haven’t watched yet, but I’ll watch them in this room and learn all about how they did ADR or whatever). It would feel a little like a slumber party and a little like the movie at the American Museum of Natural History where they explain the evolution of dinosaurs. It would be air conditioned in the summer and in winter you could have hot chocolate or a nice glass of red wine to chase down Denethor’s explosive tomatoes. I think it would be a fun place to go with friends and bring some snacks, and I think it would be a good place to cry. I think teenagers might make out in that room, and maybe I would too.
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Natasha Ochshorn is a PhD Candidate in English at CUNY, writing on fantasy texts and environmental grief. She’s lived in Brooklyn her whole life and makes music as Bunny Petite. Follow her Twitter, Instagram and Bluesky.
