Wouldn't a LOTR Series Been Nice?

[Forlong the Fat]

I have been watching, and generally enjoying, Game of Thrones on HBO. Last year, when the first season was on, I bought the first book and got about 150 pages in, but realized that the show was covering basically everything and stopped reading (I will probably give it another shot eventually).

Anyway, this got me thinking how cool it would have been if LOTR got made in a similar fashion--a three year series of around 12 episodes per year (4 years if you wanted to cover the Hobbit and some "bridge" material as they are doing with the movies). They could have covered nearly everything that way, and could have spent a lot more time developing and including more characters. I suppose it wouldn't have quite the production values of the movies (though Game of Thrones is mighty impressive) but on the whole I think it would have been better--and we would have 36-48 hours of show to watch over and over.