I bought the BBC dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings approximately 10 years ago and have recently begun to listen to it again.
It has a pleasant continuity about it in that Frodo is voiced by Ian Holm who later played Bilbo in the Peter Jackson films. Peter Woodthorpe voiced Gollum is the BBC adaption as he had also done in the Ralph Bakshi animated version from the 1970s. Add to this the British institutions that were Sir Michael Hordern and John Le Mesurier and you have avery fine cast. The brilliant Bill Nighy is almost unrecognisable as Sam Gamgee.
The adaption stays pretty true to the book but once again poor old Tom Bombadil does not make it into the final cut. The minor disappointments for me were the way that some parts were done in an almost musical-style way, this was a shame as the standard of the score is very high. I also found the casting of Robert Stephens as Aragorn to be slightly puzzling. He is now Sir Robert Stephens and a wonderful Shakespearean actor but he did not really work in this given role.
All in all, the BBCs adaption is very well done and shows the deepest respect to JRR Tolkien’s original work. My version consisted of 14 CDs and was not cheap but the prices are now far more reasonable.
