I read the first three books and 'The Eye of the World' graphic novel and...I just couldn't get into it.
A TV show could trim the fat, mind you, because by god, there's a lot of fat. I could probably tell you more about the descriptions of Lan's fighting styles than I could about Lan himself.
Breakdown said:
but from what I remember the pace is really slow and it's very heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings to start with.
As I said, only read the first three books, but, yeah, the pace is slow. As for Lord of the Rings...well, there certainly is influence, especially in the first novel, which is basically Lord of the Rings compressed into a single volume. There's lots of other similarities (Emmon's Field = The Shire, trollocs = orcs, Dark One = Sauron, Morraine = Gandalf, Lan = Arragorn, Rand and co. = hobbits...sort of...), and yeah. That said, it's far more its own Lord of the Rings-inspired piece of fiction than, say, Shannara. While the world is very binary, there's a lot of inter-factional disputes between the 'good guys' as well. 'Shades of light', rather than shades of grey, so to speak. Also, Lord of the Rings draws influence primarily from European and Christian folklore, while Wheel of Time has a bit more Eastern influence (e.g. sadin and sadair arguably bear resemblance to Ying and Yang).
Or at least that's just me. You're probably far better equipped to describe the series than me.