Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

Controversial opinion: I don’t like Lord of the Rings. Gulp. I know! Sorry. I understand that’s a potentially treasonous admission. I don’t have a problem with anyone else frothing over Tolkien’s Worlds and I can appreciate the talent that goes into bringing the stories alive on screen. But I don’t know if it’s the Elves or the Hobbits or the mystical flying beasts but in the sage words of Billy Connolly, I personally prefer stories with human-beings in them. In some ways there are similarities between Amazon’s production of Lord of the Rings and the America’s Cup. Both received a lot of public money, whether in cold, hard cash or in extremely generous tax subsidies. And the benefits of both can be a little messy to calculate. A programme like Lord of the Rings does more than just employ a lot of New Zealanders in the film and production industry. It also (presumably) shows off the country and promotes our landscape on a scale that’s hard to calculate. Again, like the America’s Cup, the indirect benefits of N