If the accents are that bad, is it possible that they aren't meant to be Irish accents at all? I don't really have an ear for that sort of thing, so I didn't know they were Irish accents in the first place. If so, does that mean it's OK for me not to be offended by supposed Irish stereotypes? (Reading further into the piece, I see it does say the dialect coach, an Australian, says those characters' dialect is built on an "Irish base." I think the problem is that there is no way to create an accent that doesn't sound like something in the real world.)
When Clint Eastwood's
Unforgiven was released in 1992, one critic complained that it was unrealistic that no one ever commented on Morgan Freeman's race: there was no way, said the critic, that a Black man wouldn't have been subject to some prejudices in the Old West. I mentioned this complaint at a family gathering and got some unexpected pushback: wasn't it racist for the critic to assume that Morgan Freeman's character was Black just because the actor playing him was Black? I've never been able to come up with an answer to that.
As for livestock in a living room, I once knew a man who had worked (in the 1970s-1990s) for a utility company in the remoter parts of Maine, and he described exactly that to me: a house in which a cow and other barnyard animals were allowed inside, and the walls were covered in filth.
Anyway, the article sucks because it uses "dwarfs" rather than "dwarves." Also the writer unfortunately writes this about Tolkien's borrowings from Celtic mythology: "The parallels between the Irish mythological figure Balor of the Evil Eye and Sauron, the flaming-red iris of Barad-dûr, are similarly obvious." Ed Power: you're commenting on the book by citing something that comes from the movie.
And given that I just paid $20 per month to signed up for Crave TV with Roger's so I can get Dance of the Dragons, I'm rather reluctant to do it. 
The prologue has some nice easter eggs for fans but is such an ultra-truncated summary of the First Age that it feels rather weightless and unimportant. (I did like that super-stylized big red camera shot though).
