I enjoy the TV series more than the books, surprisingly enough. Whereas the books go into high amounts of detail and make for dense reading, the TV series can show all those details in only a few seconds, which allows for the good parts- the action, drama, and horror- to shine through rather than be bogged down.
The books, in a lot of ways, share many similarities to screenplays, in that they describe what's going on scene by scene, jumping around from different characters' points of view. This can work in books, but if done too often or badly, can start slowing the pace down too much.
TV shows, however, don't really have that problem as much, and since the books are basically written like screenplays, they adapt themselves very well to the screen.
So although I don't like George RR Tolkien's writing style very much, I certainly appreciate his creativity in creating strong source material.
RE: Why Most Fantasy Stories Are Bad- A Mini-Essay