5 Fantasy TV Shows Way Better Than The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power

Pretty much every fantasy show is someone's favorite genre series, so it feels unfair to say that "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" doesn't necessarily always cut the mustard. Still, both critical and audience approval do indicate that it's far from the best fantasy show out there. Though "The Rings of Power" has a massive budget, it has been subject to fan criticism, which reflects on its Rotten Tomatoes ratings. While the show's Tomatometer rating is a very decent 84%, its audience-driven Popcornmeter rating is a measly 48%.  

With this in mind, many fans of both high and low fantasy are probably taking careful looks around to locate some other, hopefully better show that they can become invested in, maybe something with more payoff than the Tolkien Amazon Prime Video show has hitherto given them. To answer this call, Looper has taken a look at the fantasy genre's best and brightest, and landed on five specific shows that people disappointed with "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" will likely be far happier with. 

Amazon Prime Video's animated "The Legend of Vox Machina" is something of an odd duck when it comes to its origin story. It started out as an adaptation of "Critical Role," an online Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying show, and specifically its first major campaign. This means that while it's ostensibly a D&D adaptation, but the very specifics of the campaign and the show make it stand out as a truly great fantasy series outside that immediate context, as well.

Dramatic and action-filled with a hefty dose of comedy, "The Legend of Vox Machina" is full of small details you may have missed. To the delight of "Critical Role" fans, it embraces the best of both worlds by starting out with a fresh story before embracing the stories in the series proper — though, in all honesty, for many fans, "The Legend of Vox Machina" itself may just be the series proper now.

The show follows a party of seven characters and an extremely delightful bear called Trinket (Matthew Mercer). Their adventures are as charming as they are addictive, and will appeal to fans of "Critical Role" — as well as all friends of role playing games and fantasy shows, period. What's more, you can binge through the entire series and move right on to its sibling show "The Mighty Nein," which provides even more stories of Exandria.

No one can touch J.R.R. Tolkien when it comes to world-building in his books, and Peter Jackson follows suite by bringing the writer's world to big screen life. When it comes to fantasy TV shows, though, George R.R. Martin reigns supreme. There have been multiple Martin shows over the years, but when it comes to depicting fantasy adventures and warfare, there's only one possible choice. HBO's "Game of Thrones" changed the game when it arrived, offering fans a rich and morally ambiguous world that wasn't quite as full of magic as Middle Earth, but it offered way more intrigue in terms of deception and violence.

There is little to be said about "Game of Thrones" that hasn't been said many times before, but even so, it's worth reiterating just how influential this show was at its best. You can say absolutely what you want about Season 8 — we here at Looper have certainly had our say about what went wrong with "Game of Thrones" — but there simply is no denying that virtually every fantasy show is now compared to the yardstick it provided. In this particular comparison, "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" enters the fight at hobbit weight.

The Disney+ show "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" might have seemed somewhat unnecessary when it first was announced. After all, the Percy Jackson franchise had already been adapted into two films, "Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (2010) and "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters" (2013), with such lukewarm reception that it's no wonder why we never got a third "Percy Jackson" movie. 

Fortunately, the show corrects course with a vengeance. "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" is a skillful series that puts the franchise's fantastical Greek mythology elements to good use. It brings alive a world full of genuinely fascinating characters, and keeps the viewer coming back for more. There's a nice dose of comedy and some surprisingly gruesome elements. Some of it is reminiscent of the Harry Potter franchise, but "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" has arguably more heart and humor than J.K. Rowling's works. 

The show is smart, visually impressive, and well acted, single-handedly retrieving Rick Riordan's works from the metaphorical bargain bin that the movies might have condemned them to forever without this series' emergence. "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" is big, bold, and incredibly entertaining as it juggles the tale of growing up with an imaginative take on the hero's journey arc. 

Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire," which is retitled into "The Vampire Lestat" for Season 3, is AMC's biggest genre franchise workhorse since "The Walking Dead." In many ways, however, the Immortal Universe it spawned is a very different beast from the not-zombie show. 

"Interview with the Vampire" is all about representation. Whenever it needs to go gothic — and it often does — it does so with extreme glee, not pulling a single punch or leaving a single fang unbared. When its plot calls for LGBTQ+ representation — which it often does — the show's precisely as on point as you'd wish, going by the source material. The show is well cast across the board, and the world of vampires that it builds is never anything less than highly captivating and entertaining.

"Interview with the Vampire" is so inundated in the fantasy zeitgeist that even newcomers to the genre can jump right in this dark fantasy tale about vampires. As a bonus, fantasy fans will be delighted to see Game of Thrones star Jacob Anderson (who plays the Unsullied leader Grey Worm on the show) playing a very, very different role here. 

Oh, yes, Netflix's "One Piece" is a fantasy show. In some ways, it might just be the fantasy show to end all fantasy shows. After all, what better fantasy could there be than a bunch of pirates with supernatural powers duking it out on mythical seas, while the most powerful of them are on a quest to seek out a mysterious treasure that may or may not exist? 

"One Piece" is based on Eiichiro Oda's manga of the same name, which has also been adapted into an anime. It's also a shockingly accurate adaptation, with even the most absurd and cartoonish characters painstakingly brought to life. While easily associated with the manga and anime for obvious reasons, "One Piece" is a bona fide fantasy series that features a colorful party on a massive quest, while facing all sorts of hurdles and antagonists on the way. It's relentlessly entertaining and genuinely good, with every shot a piece of eye candy few other shows can match. The show's characters and world are as enticing as they come, and even though it's virtually certain that the live-action "One Piece" won't run as long as the source material and the anime, every season we get will be a gift of impeccable fantasy.