Rating: 
Summary: Yes! You should hear this, even if you've seen the movie!
Review: I have owned a copy of this remarkable BBC radio dramatization of the Lord of the Rings for probably 15 years, and still remember its appearance on National Public Radio over twenty years ago. I read the books thirty years ago. I have loved the movies.I feel I'm qualified to answer the question: "Is hearing this worth it?" "Do I really need to own this?" You need this. The books are wonderful (and unlike all other versions are of course "unabridged"). However, how often can you read them? The movies are wonderful, however again how often can you find the time to commit to watch them. Plus, everything is "invisioned" for you. This is a work of imagination! Shouldn't you use your own imagination?
This radio drama sits in the pleasant middle ground. You can use your mind to see what your ears hear. This is a portable experience, you can take it with you, and multi-task while you're experiencing it. Artistically, this production is as wonderful as the movie production, and has a more quiet charm. You have high quality actors in top form (Michael Hordern, Robert Stephans, Ian Holm to name a few). You have quieter music (chamber strings and harp mostly) You have more of Tolkien's own lyrics and poetry. You also have more of Tolkien's original plot, the Scouring of the Shire is not in the movie. I will restate what other reviews have said: "Stay away from the Mind's Eye version!" Unfortunately, only the BBC really knows how to turn out high quality, aurally detailed radio drama. (Well, so does ZBS media, but that's another story.)
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Drama
Review: This is a great dramatization of one of the finest literary works. It captures Tolkien's spirit without drastically changing the story and characters. Well worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining read
Review: While I really enjoyed the BBC version of The Hobbit, I enjoyed this BBC version of The Lord of the Rings even more! Very enjoyable and entertaining audio version of Lord of the Rings! Much better than the Mind's Eye version. Great listening for my 2-hour commute everyday! I recommend this to every Tolkien fan!
Rating: 
Summary: Great.... but....
Review: I got this and listened. After it was over I was amazed!!! The voices were excelent. (except for a few but I'll get to that later) My favorite was Gandalf. He sounded strangely close to Ian Mckellen (the best Gandalf ever). Ian Holm as Frodo (plays Bilbo in the movies) was also a nice addition. The bad ones were, Arwen: She sound like she was coughing every time she talked aacchhhh!! Strider: Notice I didn't say Aragorn. After they leave Bree he sounds fine but in Bree he sounds like a hick. What's up with that? The Battle of the Pelenor fields was ok... but it had a few minutes of the battle and that horribly annoying song (same with the high pitched lady near the end with those annoying chimes!!!!) The ring chime accompanied by the voices was obnoxious. But other than those minor details it is very much worth getting. I can't say what my favorite part is until i listen agian (which will be soon).
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent production boring story
Review: I guess I'm one of the few people in the world who is not a Lord of the Rings fan. I may have approached this book wrongly but BBC is well known for their outstandning theatre of the mind presentations. I did find the production to be top notch but the story was just so weird and at times so stagnant that I gave up on the whole thing by the seventh CD. In my opinion there were far too many places and characters with weird names. The action was slow paced and it took forever for something exciting to occur. I found myself saying "just get on with it!" I don't even feel the need to finish listening to the story though I might go back one day and give it another try. If this is suppose to be the granddaddy of fantasy stories it sure did not live up to the hipe. Give me Star Wars any day then this dribble; at least there is action and the story is full of characters one can relate to. Hobits, Elves and alike are not for me. Bottom line, get a paper back version from the library and check the story out before forking out the cash for this box set. Its a great set and the actors do a fine job but the story is a snooze fest at best.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I recently purchased this version based on reviews from other listners, I was sadly disappointed. I have the Mind's Eye version and the BBC version is much more detailed, but it sounds as if it was almost completele copied from the Mind's Eye version, there is very little originality. For detail on the story, recording quality and packaging I give it high marks as it is much more detailed than I thought. As for the music, It didn't sound appropriate at all. I didn't find it medieval at all. I especially disliked the song from the dream of Boromir, terrible. The other songs and voices of the characters in their roles were also unrealistic. Most of the actors's voices did not match the roles they were playing. When I heard the Nazgul or Dark Lord himself speaking, I expected a very evil sounding character. What did I hear, a proper distinguished english gentleman. Characters from this story come from all over the Land, one should expect people from different lands to have different inflections when speaking, just as they do in real life. EVERYONE had the same soumd. Not realistic at all. For presentation of the story I would recommend the Mind's Eye version on cassette tape. The Cd version of Mind's Eye has about an hour removed from the tape version, but is more realistic sounding. On the whole, I would give this version very low recommendations. Sorry
Rating:
Summary: the best thing radio drama has ever done!
Review: I personally beg to differ with the reviewer who criticized the movie in comparison with this book. One should not try to compare these two mediums. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. You expect different things of each of them. This production does more than justice to radio drama, it sets standards by which other drama should be measured. It is a delight to listen to it. Of course it's not perfect, but what is? Ian Holm is stupendous as Frodo, and the rest of the cast lives up to him. The adaptation is excellent, leaving no essential details out (except maybe now the hobbits got their swords). The music and songs are wonderful (my personal favorite is the marching song of the Ents). Even the cameos are wonderful, from the bumbling innkeeper Butterbur to the ponderous (and I must say, occasionally hilariously funny)Treebeard. All in all, buy and enjoy the movie, but listen to this in the dark, and let your imagination go farther than you ever thought it could.
Rating:
Summary: Down With The Movies! Up With The BBC!
Review: This is what the Peter Jackson movies should have been. I've heard a lot of excuses about how creative licensing had to be taken to make the Lord Of The Rings comprehensible to a modern audience, yet this BBC Dramatization proves that it could have been done a lot better (the BBC should have done LOTR as a television miniseries, in the tradition of I, Claudius and the Narnia Chronicles). This glorious dramatization is almost entirely faithful to the spirit and text of the original manuscript, with the exception of the absence of Tom Bombadil. The voices are all perfectly cast (except possibly Glorfindel, who comes off sounding really overblown), particularly in the principle roles. The sound effects are great, and most noticeably, the songs and music (which are painfully lacking from that glossy motion picture mess) are almost all wonderfully arranged. At thirteen hours, this is best given a weekend to itself, or better yet, a long cross county drive (I first heard it driving back and forth between Califorina and Arizona, and hearing Gandalf face off against the Balrog as the desert rolls by at nightfall was particulalry emotional). If you want to get as close to the books as you can get without reading them yourself, this is it. Emotionally powerful, deeply hearfelt, and for my money, the greatest single dramatic interpretation of Tolkien's words to date.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This CD set is fantastic. For qualifications, I have read the trilogy seven times (just started my eighth) over many years. I have listened to nearly every radio play, seen nearly every movie and watched many professional local plays related to it. This BBC production is certainly one of the best. If you like the recent Peter Jackson movie renditions of the trilogy, you will probably like this set as well. They are very similar. This set is more accurate, but it is somewhat understandable that the movie takes more literary license. Yes, like the movie, there are some things taken out (Tom Bombadil, for example). However, this should not be surprising. The unabridged audio version of the trilogy runs something like 55 hours. This set is less than 13 hours - less than 24% of the length! The movies are something like 9 hours, but the visual aspect helps fill in a lot of the details. Although the audio version allows some filling in, too, it obviously does it less so. There are some sound effects that may go unnoticed unless you know the story. This does not detract from the story, but encourages reading it again. One drawback is the dynamic range. Usually, a wide dynamic range like this recording is a good thing. However, when I am driving and listening, I often found myself adjusting the volume so that it was not too quiet or too loud. Sometimes this was a nuisance, but the quality of the audio more than made up for this "deficiency". Another drawback was the number of tracks and their length. Some of them ranged from 2 minutes to 23 minutes averaging 6 tracks per CD. With it being so easy for a CD to have as many tracks as desired (although 20 is a comfortable maximum because of the displays on some CD players), there was no need for some of the tracks to be so short or so long. This was especially noticeable when the track would shift in the middle of a session or a track would have three or four sessions in one track. The main reason this was a nuisance for me was on my portable CD player. When I turn it off, it does not remember where it stopped (it does remember the track, but some other players do not). So, I would have to remember where I stopped and then fast-forward or rewind for up to 12 minutes. The production itself is excellent. The voices are clear, well articulated and expressive. Each character sounds nearly as well as I imagine they would -- they bring life to the sound waves. The sound editing is excellent. The instrumental music is sparse, but very good. The vocal music ranges from good to excellent and is mostly located at three-quarters of the set and the last CD or so. One test for me is whether the ending makes me cry! Now, I rarely cry at movies, plays, reading books or listening to them. In fact, only three movies have made me really cry ("Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan", "Dances with Wolves" and "Beaches") and two books (one of the Sugar Creek Gang books and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy). When my wife and I read the trilogy outloud together, the last paragraphs took ten to fifteen minutes to complete. This audio set is the same. It is so moving that it is very difficult to keep a stiff upper lip. Like Frodo, I failed. But all's well that ends better!
Rating:
Summary: This is the BBC
Review: Primarily a comment that the preceding review is not of the above product. It refers to the Mind's Eye version of this most beloved of fantasy epics, an interpretation that I heartily agree lacks much. For one thing, it is acted by Americans, who just can't do it, no matter how hard we may try. This version, on the other hand, is about as good as a radio drama might be. The acting is excellent, and the arrangement of the story for radio so good that even I, a Tolkien junkie who finds the recent movies only barely acceptable, enjoy it a lot. With such stars as Ian Holm, it is no wonder. Of course, I always prefer a straight reading to the necessarily imperfectly altered radio drama. Nevertheless, if you are too lazy to read the books or to have someone else read them to you, or if you have read them before and want to see another interpretation of Tolkien's masterwork, this is the recording for you.
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