Why reconfigure The Hobbit trilogy into a 12-part television show? Because trying to sit through a nine-hour story (even in three hour segments) is not only uncomfortable, it’s mentally exhausting and there is too much story crammed into these movies to keep track of.

Now imagine what a 9 year-old child is grappling with.

Also available:

The Hobbit, Angry-Cut in 4k

Gandalf The Gray

By breaking these movies down into smaller digestible chapters it is far easier to follow along and keep track of the story, especially when a “previously on The Hobbit” montage of relevant portions of past sequences helps to remind you what’s going on. This has been done for serials in television (and movies before T.V.) for so long because it works.

Also – at the beginning of each episode I put the Old Bilbo with quill in hand stating “It is time for you to know what really happened.” What this does is remind the viewer that this is a story being told by Bilbo – and hence embellishments will exist. This, in turn, also helps to make the silly physics and love triangle and all the rest more palatable. Because it’s a Hobbit telling a story from a Hobbit’s perspective. Get it?

This is the full trilogy and (almost) completely uncut, except for this: Frodo has been removed from the prologue completely (though he appears at the end in Chapter 12). The prologue from Desolation of Smaug follows the prologue of Unexpected Journey and is what actually starts our story. Other than this minor rearrangement and a few other minor cuts, (Goblin Song is removed, for example,) this is the full, uncut extended editions of The Hobbit trilogy, Tauriel, Radagast and all.

The reason for this format is to make watching the entirety of this story more family-friendly and let’s face it: as we grown-ups roll our eyes at the ridiculous nature of much of this stuff, the kiddies eat it up. I’ve created this for my grandchildren, ages 9 and 7. I just thought I’d share it with you. For download links, read the entire Angry-Cut post to know how to find them. The link to that post is above.

Optimized for Apple TV version 2 or newer.

Just add these files to iTunes and you will have a new Television Show, already populated with synopsis, episode titles and artwork, etc.

This may also be the case with other media managers, I do not know.

Twelve Episodes:

Chapter 1, A Hole In The Ground 717.7 MB

Chapter 2, An Unexpected Journey 1014.8 MB

Chapter 3, Imladris 733.3 MB

Chapter 4, Under Hill 886.5 MB

Chapter 5, The Mirkwood 885.5 MB

Chapter 6, Thranduil 770.2 MB

Chapter 7, Durin’s Day 764.2 MB

Chapter 8, Smaug The Terrible 887.0 MB

Chapter 9, Cause And Effect 930.6 MB

Chapter 10, The Hordes Of Hell 990.1 MB

Chapter 11, Ravenhill 1.12 GB

Chapter 12, There And back Again 772.8 MB

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Unimportant stuff, if you care to read it, or not.

About the stop-points: The way I remember it in the old days, television series were purchased by broadcasters in a batch of about 26 episodes, then eventually down to 23 or so and has remained to around this number for the most part up to now. Though the premium cable networks (like HBO, Showtime, AMC, etc.) began commissioning television series in batches of 8 to 12, for example: Band of Brothers, The Tudors, Game of Thrones, etc.

Broadcasters sell advertising and so a one-hour show had an actual run-length of about 53 minutes. As broadcasters increased advertising more and more those run-lengths shrank drastically over the years where today a one hour show has a run-length of between 40 and 44 minutes with the occasional exception of a longer length.

The ten episode shows running on premium networks don’t rely on advertising and so those run-lengths for a one hour show are often between 48 and 58 minutes.

For The Hobbit TV I have gone for a hybrid approach: There are only 12 “episodes” with each run-length at about 42 to 44 minutes with a couple exceptions where they go a little shorter or longer. For the most part the stopping point for each episode worked out very well at these run-lengths, though I must admit that the Battle of the Five Armies is so long and complicated that the last two episodes before the finale may feel rather sudden in their stopping (and restarting) points. Though, I do think it works out as well as can be expected.

I did try my best and I did use a cheat in the finale episode to bring the Sauron storyline to a new close (and match the run-length of the previous 11). I’m hopeful you won’t mind what I’ve done.

Enjoy.