Leningrad Television broadcast a single episode of Khraniteli in 1991 during the final days of the Soviet Union. The production team filmed the live-action adaptation over nine hours within one week using videotape.
Natalya Serebryakova served as director alongside Costel Tudor Voica while Andrei Romanov composed the musical score for the series. Vladimir Muravyov and Andrey Kistyakovsky provided the script based on their 1982 Russian translation of The Fellowship of the Ring.
The teleplay vanished from public view after its initial 1991 broadcast and remained missing until archivists found the tapes in 2021. Channel 5 uploaded the episodes to YouTube that same year where viewers watched the first episode over half a million times within days.
Tom Bombadil appears in the Old Forest scene where he rescues the hobbits and Goldberry entertains the four travelers at her table inside his home. An undead Barrow-wight traps the group before Tom frees them again and the story includes a flashback showing Smeagol murdering his friend Deagol.
Western commentators greeted the return with comments about its gloriously rudimentary production values and described it as a weirdly psychedelic Soviet reimagining. Entertainment Weekly noted the Bombadil scene evoked a sense of fairy-tale surrealism while The New York Post cited an American viewer wishing for English subtitles to be created.