My wife (who has read zero of LotR, but enjoyed all the movies) and I really liked this.
I thought this show probably made halflings cooler than any TV or movie has to date and, for once, we weren't eager to get the elves off-screen (although they're still the most tiresome bunch, clearly even to each other) and the dwarves were, by far, the big standouts.
The show was a nice corrective to other LotR material by having a lot of heroic women, ranging from Galadriel to Bronwyn, whose heroism is all the more impressive given that she's a level 1 commoner and not a Tier 4 PC showing a lot of patience around everyone else.
I especially liked the portrayal of Galadriel. It is rare that we are allowed to see a woman just simmering with barely contained rage in nearly every scene the way we do Galadriel (I could probably name 30 or 40 male characters like this without breaking a sweat, of course). And while she's reckless and brash for an elf, compared to everyone else, she is stately and contained, and the actress managed to convey both elements at all times.
Likewise, I thought the expansion of skin tones and ethnicities for LotR was great, although the moment we had one Pacific Islander-looking actor (given where they filmed this, he's probably Maori) made me realize making all of Numenor played by Pacific Islanders would have been amazing.
Even when they skimped on things (Lindon is apparently three rooms, the show having apparently spent all of its setting budget on Numenor), the show looked and sounded like a million bucks. (Considerably more than that, actually.) And Fiona Apple's sung version of the poem at the end was as good as any of the vocal songs in the LotR movies and feels very in keeping with them.
I liked most of the stuff invented for this story, particularly Adar, the Kilmonger of this show.
For the second season, I want much, much more dwarves, I'm excited to see Rhun, and I want to see some freaking ent-wives. They teased ents in the first episode, and nothing since. Ent-wives or we riot!
