YMMV / The Keepers

The miniseries:

• Awesome Music: While its usage in the series often causes Soundtrack Dissonance, the music itself can be pretty darn good at times. The most prominent examples include the Nazgul theme (which is "Fire" by popular Soviet electronic composer Eduard Artemyev), referred to by fans as the "Ringwraith Rave", and the opening and end credits songs. The latter two were commercially released in 1996, alongside other pieces from the series, as part of composer Andrei Romanov's LP Music of Middle-Earth.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bilbo's actor is pretty well-liked, as he's actually considered a pretty good piece of casting.
  • Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, both for being fairly likeable and simply for appearing in the film at all.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Legolass, for the show's female Legolas.
  • Ringwraith Rave, for the rockin' synth music that serves as the Nazgul's theme.
• Faux Symbolism: Right before urging Frodo to give him the ring, Boromir — who one might say is trying to tempt him into sin — offers the hobbit an apple from a tree he was too short to reach.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bilbo's actor Georgy Shtil bears more than a passing resemblance to Ian McKellen, who would himself play Gandalf a decade later.
  • The series has quite a few similarities to The Hobbits, a completely unconnected Finnish adaptation made two years later.
  • The phrase "Winter is coming" is mentioned several times. Frodo and Sam also talk about heading out into the cold at the end of the series, right after the former's confrontation with Boromir. Both Boromir and Ned Stark would of course later be played by Sean Bean.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Comparing Gandalf and Bilbo's actors Viktor Kostetskiy and Georgy Shtil to Liam Neeson and Ian McKellen, respectively.
  • The show has spawned variations of the "taking the hobbits to Isengard" meme, with Leningrad — where it was filmed — substituting for Isengard.
• Narm Charm:
  • The ending — where Frodo and Sam go off on their own — is set to a pop song which is admittedly rather cheesy, but it does still capture the feeling of The Power of Friendship, which is a big theme of the story.
  • The Barrow-wight also stands out as being both one of the show's many strange reinterpretations of the source material, and as an effectively creepy Monster Clown in their own right.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The young, attractive Gimli of this film might bring to mind the "sexy dwarfs" from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy.
  • Also like The Hobbit, this series pulls a Gender Flip on a canonically male elf. While that trilogy merely created Tauriel out of the nameless Captain of the Guard, The Keepers went all out and made Legolas a woman.^note  It is possible that Legolas was meant to be a Crosscast Role, but if so, they didn't do a particularly good job at hiding the gender of the performer. Ultimately, the character never speaks and is never referred to by any pronouns, so it really is anybody's guess.
  • Peter Jackson is sometimes noted (and criticized) for making the Eye of Sauron literal, but this series was the first live-action adaptation to do so. (The "trend" was then continued shortly thereafter in The Hobbits, and all three productions were preceeded by the animated The Return of the King by Rankin/Bass Productions.
  • Twelve years before Peter Jackson's adaptation, the series already seem to be using Heartbeat Soundtrack as Déagol is being strangled, although an actual influence is unlikely to the extreme.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Sauron, who is now a normal, human eye — and not for the last time — with a Dastardly Whiplash personality.
  • Saruman, whose actor gives his part as much Ham and Cheese as he can muster.
  • Goldberry, portrayed here as an almost surreally wholesome Giant Woman. An extreme example in that her sequence is her sole appearance in not just the series, but in any screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
  • Gwaihir appears for only a few seconds, but it's some of the most ludicrous seconds in the series.
• So Bad, It's Good: Between the non-existent budget, the sometimes quite hammy acting, certain baffling artistic decisions and the highly unfitting music, one could argue that this is one of the more entertaining Tolkien adaptations out there.
• Special Effect Failure: Many, many examples, thanks to a shoestring budget.
  • The One Ring — the very first thing we see, in close up no less — is clearly a cheap prop not actually made of metal.
  • Hobbit feet are represented with strange, three-toed felt boots which look more dinosaur-like than anything.
  • Gandalf's fireworks are represented by monochromatic, still 2D drawings. Doesn't stop the characters from being awed by them, though.
  • Not only does the show make use of some pretty dodgy-looking Chroma Key, it also often has the camera move without the background moving with it!
  • It's pretty obvious that the production only hired three Nazgul actors, and that the one time we see "all nine" of them, they are just riding past the camera three times. In addition, the city of Leningrad can be seen in the distance on a few occasions, which rather spoils the illusion of the series taking place in a high fantasy setting.
  • Gwaihir is portrayed by a bug-eyed puppet which hardly resembles an eagle, and has to be seen to be believed.
  • Gorlum's deformitives seem to have been realized by covering the actor's head in lettuce!
  • Most of the weapons are pretty obviously made out of tin foil.
• Spiritual Adaptation: With the somewhat psychedelic visuals and the celebrity composer, this might be the closest thing we'll ever get to the unmade The Lord of the Rings movie by The Beatles.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The piece that plays as the hobbits set out on their journey is a thinly-veiled take on Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The omission of the Balrog is an interesting combination of this and an aversion of So Bad, It's Good. It was likely cut because of budget reasons, but several viewers admit that would probably have preferred another hilarious disaster of a design over giving Gandalf a disappointing offscreen death.
• What the Hell, Costuming Department?:
  • Neither Gandalf the Gray nor Saruman the White actually wear their respective colours.
  • While Tom Bombadil's outfit really isn't bad, some viewers were disappointed that it also wasn't quite a recreation of his Iconic Outfit from the book.
  • For whichever reason, the Barrow-wight wears literal clown makeup. Stephen Colbert compared them to "a circus clown tripping on bath salts."
  • The orcs generally look like Horny Vikings with some mild face paint.

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