Return of the Ring

The second instalment of The Rings of Power sees Sauron bend Middle-earth, and us, to his will.

Sauron in his elf guise of Annatar in The Rings of Power.

Life before smartphones, Middle-earth style. If only, during the Second Age, our warrior-elf heroine Galadriel could have got a message — somehow, anyhow — to the great elven ring-maker Lord Celebrimbor in his city of Eregion, then the entire dark nightmare that would tear their world apart might have been avoided.

The good Celebrimbor would have known that the angelic “Lord of Gifts” Annatar, newly arrived in his ring-smelting tower, was actually … Sauron, in disguise and with designs on being the one baddie to rule them all.

Annatar/Sauron is about to get right inside the head of the elf who creates those magical rings — the ones that will end up spawning millennia of war and $1bn screen franchises.

In fairness to Sauron (Charlie Vickers), his manipulation of the hapless Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and indeed all of Middle-earth, a deception that runs like a spine through series two of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video), is the best thing about this gargantuan opus. It amplifies how frustrating the rest of it can be: epic but hopelessly overcooked, thrilling and even scary at times, a real slog at others (the first series, it should be said, did tidy business, viewed by 100 million people, according to the dark tower of Amazon).

Take the opening sequence, a flashback featuring an earlier incarnation of Sauron pitching his kingly credentials to an army of orcs — looking like gruesomely diseased Albert Steptoes — and ending with a black primordial slop oozing out of the bowels of a mountain.

It is darkly fantastical in just the kind of way for which a 70-inch plasma screen was invented. But then we’re back with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), rolling her Rs portentously (“Saurrron”; “Morrdorr”) at Elrond, while other elven figures find time to peer into their infinite wisdom to mutter unfathomable things such as: “Judge the work, leave judgment considering those who wrought it to the judge who sees all things.”

Or, every time the plot involving the men of Middle-earth — a boo-hiss rebellion in Numenor; Isildur’s flirtation with a forest beauty en route to Pelargir — feels deathly turgid, then an eerie visit to barrow-wights, for example, offers all you could want from a fantasy saga.

Arondir and Isildur.

One challenge here is simply recalling what even happened in the first series.

Who is this mopey teenager Theo again, and why is he so sullen toward the dynamic elf Arondir? The tall, voiceless hobo figure is also back, travelling to Rhun via the desert with his pair of harfoot friends in tow; he is now a well-spoken amnesiac but we’re starting to get an idea that he might be someone of world-shaking consequence.

Not least when he is given advice from one Tom Bombadil.

Yes, that merry fellow pops up here, played by Rory Kinnear with a singsong country lilt and a twinkle in his eye.

The fact that old Tom’s whimsical song becomes a lavishly catchy soundtrack number, with Rufus Wainwright singing of “bells on the heather” over sweeping strings, is perhaps emblematic of the way Tolkien lore has been souped up into blockbuster IP — or bastardised, as the author’s scholars would say.

Bombadil and, to give them their due, the harfoots, provide light in what’s otherwise a series characterised by despair: dwarves are in crisis in Khazad-dum, with King Durin succumbing to his cursed ring; there is a siege of Eregion that makes the battle of Helm’s Deep look like a skirmish; there is quite probably a Morian kitchen sink thrown in ­somewhere.

Yet if this can feel like a series almost drunk on its budget and running time, there is still the intimate, twisted dance of Sauron and Celebrimbor (Edwards really is superb here).

It’s almost as if evil old Sauron is bending not just Celebrimbor to his will but us too, and in doing so, ironically, saving the day.

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming on Prime Video.