Queen Regent Míriel’s faith is tested, Isildur finds himself at a crossroads and Elrond uncovers a secret. 

We’re nearly at the halfway point of the first season of Amazon’s streaming The Lord of the Rings series and… it’s a bit slow, isn’t it? The huge unloading of material in the opening 15 minutes has given way to a pace that is so glacial that it’s competing with the New Zealand scenery where it’s filmed.

I guess that one of the problems is that even with all the Tolkien appendices and other trimmings that have been drafted in to fuel the story, there’s only so much to be filled in between now and The Hobbit. And with a projected five-year plan, we done want to be burning through the material too quickly.

And yet, with everything that’s going on in Middle-earth (a seemingly endless cycle of premonitions, signs and portents) there’s still a lot of people moping about by stone walls at wooden tables. The visuals continue to impress, including a shocking nightmare of the Queen Consort, but things just need notching up a gear. One of the biggest mistakes of The Hobbit trilogy was stretching out limited material to an unwieldy run time – let’s hope the TV prequel doesn’t suffer from the same fate.

Verdict: The first episode of the season that dragged its hobbity, hairy heels. We could do with fewer storylines and a greater progression of the lead narrative. As the saying goes, rings can only get better. 6/10

Nick Joy