To keep you entertained, Amazon Prime Video has assembled an outstanding lineup of original shows. Excellent programs have also been acquired for streaming in the US from other countries. Fortunately, such exclusives, such as A Very English Scandal and Catastrophe, can be enjoyed by a larger audience. Let’s take a look at the best Amazon original series.
1. Catastrophe
Catastrophe isn’t an Amazon Original since it first screened on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, but it is an Amazon exclusive in the United States. It tells the story of an American man who meets an Irish woman in London and decides to pursue a relationship with her after a brief fling (mostly because she gets pregnant). Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, the show’s stars, wrote and produced it. It is, without a doubt, the funniest sitcom on television. Add in some heartbreaking relationship dynamics, and things just get better. Amazon has four short seasons available for streaming.
2. Bosch
Fans of Michael Connelly’s books waited years for his characters to be accurately represented on the big screen. Bosch, especially lead actor Titus Welliver in the role of Harry Bosch, is a gift to the fans. Welliver has a long background in Hollywood, having starred in films such as The Doors and a Transformers film, as well as on television shows such as The Good Wife, Agents of SHIELD, and even LOST as the villain known as The Man in Black. But he truly shines as a cop on a mission in Bosch. Welliver is so good at narrating Connelly’s novels that he now narrates the audiobook versions of them.
3. Mozart in the Jungle
A TV show based on an oboist’s memoir does not sound like a thrilling binge. But it’s difficult to look away from Mozart in the Jungle. Gael Garcia Bernal, the scene-stealing character, is hired to conduct the fictitious New York Symphony. He upends the lives of the musicians, none more so than Hailey Rutledge, the book’s fictionalized oboist. Of course, over the course of four seasons, the show took several liberties with the source material, moving the cast to Mexico and Venice and placing them in unlikely love matches. Yeah, it’s a little like a soap opera. Yes, it is worthwhile to watch.
4. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
If there’s one thing that irritates me about the multi-award-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s how simple it seems to be to break into comedy as a woman in the 1950s simply by getting on stage and talking, with no preparation or practice. Look no further than HBO’s Crashing to see how difficult it can be, even for a white guy in the modern age.
That being said, this is a lush production that brings late 1950s New York to life through characters that are immediately watchable: Tony Shaloub as Mrs. Midge Maisel’s long-suffering father; Alex “Lois Griffin” Borstein as her would-be agent; and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan as Midge herself.
5. One Mississippi
Tig Notaro has had an eventful decade, with a lot of misery and a lot of happiness mixed, which she transforms into amazing fodder for not just her stand-up, but also for One Mississippi, a two-year-long Amazon series that was canceled. It also didn’t help that it had disgraced comedian Louis CK listed as a producer for a long time, much to Notaro’s consternation, even before he was tarnished by the #MeToo scandals.
6. The Tick
For a 1980s super-hero spoof, The Tick has seen almost as many TV reboots as bigger names like Batman. Yet, despite his near-invulnerability and merely altruistic motivations, this near-invulnerable superhero still manages to blend in. It doesn’t matter if it’s the old Tick comics, the 90s Saturday morning cartoon, the Fox sitcom, or this beautiful single-camera comedy with a special effects budget. In the most recent installment, the blue suit is worn by the gravel-voiced comedian Peter Serafinowicz.
7. Forever
In Forever, June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen) fall in love and build a life that is completely predictable before something happens that changes everything, which I will not reveal here. Come to see two old SNL mates be funny and stay for what follows. Unfortunately, it only lasted one season.
8. Fleabag
Fleabag, another UK import exclusive to Amazon in the US, is on everyone’s top ten list this year for a reason. It’s astonishingly nice. The second season is much funnier than the first, which was gloomy and moody yet still funny. That’s all thanks to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created the character for a stage show and wrote and performed it. She’s unlikely to have Fleabag back for a third season, as the Brits are notorious for leaving us wanting more.
9. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
There are plenty of Jack Ryans out there. John Krasinski, like Baldwin, Ford, Affleck, and Pine, joins the cast of Tom Clancy’s “State Department supply-chain logician” turned field agent for the first time on television. The first season of Jack Ryan’s story does not suit any of the books, but rather details how the desk-bound Ryan is drawn into the sector. In the second season, Noomi Rapace joins the cast.
10. The Boys
Garth Ennis, a comic book writer, is not a fan of soft and fuzzy. His book The Boys is about vigilantes who hunt down super-“heroes” who misuse the privileges granted to them by society, which isn’t simple given that they’re fighting real super-powered people. Grim and dirty aren’t quite the right words to describe it: something like disgusting and bloody. That doesn’t make it any less fun.
