Tolkien Meets Terry Pratchett's Discworld In 8-Part Prime Video Fantasy Series

While Discworld's Terry Pratchett and The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien’s styles of fantasy writing are not all that similar on the surface, Prime Video’s iconic fantasy franchise marries the appeal of both authors in one great show. J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is arguably the single most influential piece of fantasy literature from the last century, as the author’s writing style shaped much of what viewers came to expect from the genre. However, Tolkien’s writing also created a tricky challenge for screen adaptations like Prime Video’s prequel series The Rings of Power.

Much of Tolkien’s work, particularly The Silmarillion, is written in a dry, almost academic style that mirrors real-life historical documents, so it can be hard to turn this into an emotionally intimate story. The sheer scale of Tolkien’s Middle-earth histories and their sweeping scope preclude a certain level of individual characterization on the page, whereas TV drama requires main characters for the audience to get invested in. In contrast, the iconic British fantasy writer Terry Pratchett had the opposite problem.

The author of the iconic 41-novel Discworld series masterfully parodied the same familiar fantasy tropes that Tolkien helped define, and his satirical work is among the most celebrated literary contributions to the genre. However, it has proven exceedingly difficult for Discworld to spawn a screen adaptation that lived up to the books, thanks to the subtlety of Pratchett’s deadpan humor. Fortunately, despite being based on neither author’s writings, Prime Video’s second Critical Role show, The Mighty Nein, managed to blend their appeal.

The Mighty Nein Has The Scale Of Middle-earth & The Comedy Of Discworld

After Prime Video’s first animated adaptation of the popular actual play podcast Critical Role, The Legend Of Vox Machina, proved a massive hit, the series spawned a spinoff in the form of The Mighty Nein in 2025. Both shows are based on real-life Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and it shows, with their mismatched bands of antiheroes recapturing the loose, thrown-together chemistry of a great game.

However, it is The Mighty Nein’s darker spin on this premise that feels like an effective mix of Tolkien and Pratchett. Like The Lord of the Rings and The Rings of Power, The Mighty Nein has scale to spare. The show’s world feels rich, lived-in, and utterly immersive, as laden with deep and grounded in-universe lore as Game of Thrones or The Witcher. However, the show’s amoral characters and unpredictable tone also mean that, crucially, the Critical Role series carries all this storytelling scope a lot lighter than many of its contemporaries.

Compared to many fantasy shows, The Mighty Nein is unexpectedly funny and irreverent, even as the gritty series reveals the dark backstories and traumas of its main characters. Like the Discworld books, The Mighty Nein takes place in a fantasy world wherein everyone is flawed, nothing is perfect, and the show’s invented reality doesn’t reflect an idealized historical past, but instead mirrors the same social problems of contemporary reality.

Critical Role Is Ruling Fantasy TV Right Now

While its predecessor, The Legend of Vox Machina, is a more traditional heroic fantasy, complete with a band of heroes who support each other and comparatively black-and-white morality, The Mighty Nein is more cynical and subversive, and a lot funnier as a result. The show is undoubtedly darker than its predecessor, but, paradoxically, The Mighty Nein never feels like it takes itself quite as seriously as Netflix’s League of Legends show Arcane or HBO’s His Dark Materials.

The Mighty Nein’s ability to bounce seamlessly between character comedy and dark moments of brutality is a big part of the reason that the Critical Role franchise has a stranglehold on fantasy TV right now. Many franchises, such as Netflix’s The Witcher, lean too hard into taking themselves too seriously, whereas Critical Role’s The Mighty Nein proves Tolkien’s depth and Pratchett’s sardonic sense of humor can co-exist onscreen.