I know it’s considered a somewhat high brow concept of a series and maybe not for everyone. I also know it’s not exactly been the best received series around recently. And yet, speaking as a long time Tolkien Fan, I actually enjoyed it. Yes, they had to take some creative licence with the histories and kinda squashed things up a little bit. I don’t have a problem with that though. They had to find a way to tell the story succinctly and efficiently, in a way that would both keep the long time fans happy and not put off the casual viewer. And that was a difficult line to toe and I think they balanced that perfectly well.
With so much history around the early days of Tolkien’s work, some condensing was necessary or this would have gone on for decades before we got to anything significant. No, I enjoyed it, getting drawn along by the story even if they lead us down a merry dance and had me at least looking in the wrong direction. I can’t wait to see where the next series goes.