Over the past decade, there has been an abundance of sci-fi and fantasy series on television and streaming. With the top Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Expanse, The Witcher, Silo, Foundation and more, keep up with the deluge and discern which ones are worth your time , is terrifying. But there's a very simple trick to determining if one of these shows is good or not, and it's all about the costumes.

Suits seem like an obvious barometer, but the measurements may not be what you expect. Instead of looking for suits with quality, attention to detail or uniquely inspired design, all you need to do is look for how dirty the suits are.

Costume weathering, the process of adding details of wear and tear such as dirt, cuts and scratches, is a lost art on most productions. The easiest place to see the gold standard is in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. These costumes are not only wonderfully designed, they are wonderfully destroyed as well. The hobbits' cloaks start out fresh and beautiful in The Fellowship of the Ring, but by the time Sam and Frodo make it to Mordor they are torn and faded, their brilliant greens reduced to a faded gray by mottled patches set in deep from weeks of sleeping on the ground and walk through muck. And the same goes for all the other characters' clothes; Aragorn's leather is worn and tired from years of nomadic adventuring, a stark contrast to the brightness of Legolas' elf-made gear or Boromir's almost regal Gondorian garb.

It's striking and beautiful, the kind of detail that might not immediately stand out, but is an indispensable part of bringing viewers to Middle-earth. It is also an important reason why Midgard in Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power feels so off. It's less immersive and immediately more artificial, inescapably fake with an ever-present awareness that you're watching actors on set. This feeling stems from a few different aspects of that series production, but the most striking is its pristine costumes: Dwarves who spend their lives in the depths of Moria are clad in pristine leather that looks as if it was made just moments before stepping into frame. The purity of robes adorning elves like Elrond and Gil-galad should create striking contrasts with the warrior Galadriel's dirty and dented armor, but instead her armor looks practically unused, even when she's in the middle of a fight. Even the proudly unwashed Harfoots wear clothes that look like they've never been patched. The clothes look rough, but they certainly aren't the tattered tunics you'd expect from a people who spend their time happily communing with nature and unafraid of dirt and mud. Instead of transporting us to a world, all this cleanliness simply draws attention to the artwork on screen; how can this version of Middle-earth be real if it doesn't even have dirt?