Actually what has me thinking could be one of the more interesting things the show-runners say they are attempting to is about the 2 hobbit characters.
I noted the show runners mentioned the two Harfoots are going to be similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roles, from Tom Stoppard's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. If this is true, and they aren't just fooling us, this is an interesting and creative thing to do in my opinion. It's not something that I would call original, because it has been done before and can be fairly common in the fantasy genre, but I think it would be creative to have this in a Tolkien adaptation. What I mean is think about the roles C-3PO and R2-D2 play in Star Wars or the ghost brothers in Stardust. Their roles aren't directly involved in solving problems the protagonists come across. They stand off in the distance and act as commentators to the audience, through their own robot-colored (or ghost-colored) glasses. R2-D2 (at least in the original trilogy) serves as a useful mechanic who does some minor things to help the protagonists out of sticky situations, but particularly C-3PO's role is to simply be a translator. He sits off as an observer and translates information to the audience ("Well, Master Ani has been under a lot of stress lately" or tells us the odds of surviving an asteroid field). As the article mentions, hobbits are noted for being able to avoid the eyes of "big folk" blundering through. So if their roles in the series are indeed to be something like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or R2-D2 and C-3P0 than that could be rather fitting to use hobbits to fill that role. Think of just how much interest gets sparked by wanting to know what happened to the random fox passing by sleeping hobbits in the Shire.
