Amazon
There are so many shows and streaming services out there, it can be difficult to know which shows are worthy of your time and dedication.
Amazon Prime has a wide array of original programming, everything from legal thrillers to family dramas to superhero parodies to gender studies and beyond. So, how do you choose the best most bingeable show without spending ages sorting through the possibilities?
Thankfully, the internet is like your own personal researcher for just such time-consuming questions, and right here you have your answer. The following six shows are the best, most diverse, and most bingeable shows that Amazon Prime currently has to offer.
Amazon
The Tick
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The Tick is a cult classic comedic superhero created by Ben Edlund in 1986 as a newsletter mascot for his Boston area comic book store. He is super strong and super enthusiastic about fighting crime, but super clueless and kind of weird.
He wears a blue suit topped with expressive antennae and shouts “Spoon!” to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. He is the epitome of the big, dumb, strong superhero type. As the character grew in popularity he got first his own comic book, then his own cartoon, then his own live-action television show starring Patrick Warburton.
This last series premiered in 2001 and ran for only nine episodes. It is an extraordinarily funny show and Warburton’s Tick truly embodies the epic, righteous, and delusional hero.
It’s a hard act to follow, but Amazon’s The Tick with Peter Serafinowicz in the lead not only succeeds in creating a pitch-perfect reboot but effectively increases the camp factor another level. The 12-episode first season is available to watch now, and at a mere 30-minutes an episode, it is one of the most bingeable shows Amazon has to offer.
Amazon
The Man in the High Castle
There was a lot of buzz surrounding The Man in the High Castle when it first premiered in 2015 on Amazon Prime Video. Anticipation followed anticipation as praise came back for the pilot episode and the wait for episode two began — which was released a full 10 months later.
This adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s alternate history novel of the same name is set in a future in which the Nazis ostensibly won World War II, but in which there might be a deeper, more menacing truth buried under layers of conspiracy.
The Man in the High Castle has it all — compelling characters, high stakes, an intriguing conspiracy, and an imaginative look at a horrific alternate future in which fascism rules. It’s tense, exciting, smart, stylish, and timely.
There’s almost no way you can stop watching once you learn the secret history of the world. And if you start watching now you’ll be caught up for season three when it’s released later this year.
Goliath
Goliath
While Goliath could probably run on Billy Bob Thornton’s charisma alone, that’s not the only thing this legal thriller has going for it. Created by David E. Kelley, who created some of the most influential legal dramas of the last 30 years — including Ally McBeal and Boston Legal — Goliath follows washed-up attorney Billy McBride as he stumbles upon a high profile legal conspiracy involving his former law firm.
The main criteria that makes a show qualify as bingeable is if I literally cannot stop watching. I had zero intention of watching Goliath beyond the first few minutes and yet I found myself unable to stop.
While the show itself is sufficiently intriguing, a big factor in its initial watchability is Thornton’s, Billy McBride. Thornton is literally compelling. A character in the first episode calls him a “weird a**hole,” which is probably the most apt description of his character possible.
Thornton allows his natural neuroticism to play through, bringing a simple charm to his character’s quirks and phobias — or the fact that he still gets anxious watching Hoosiers after having seen it 300 times.
Season two of Goliath is released later this year, so its the perfect time to catch up.
Amazon
Jean-Claude Van Johnson
The ads for Jean-Claude Van Johnson do not prepare you for the level of absurdity it contains. The premise, of course, is that Jean-Claude Van Damme’s movie career is an elaborate cover for his second secret job as a spy codenamed Johnson.
The tone approaches the levels of tongue-in-cheek and campiness of films like Hot Shots! or Machete. Van Damme excels at playing the washed-up hero with the kind of pitch-perfect, over-the-top earnestness that ties every joke and every scene together.
At the same time, he affects a perfectly French ennui that adds another dimension of parody to his performance. Refreshingly, Van Damme does nothing to deny that he’s an aging action hero — he actually embraces the fact — and lovingly lampoons the most famous films of his career while satirizing the collapse of the Hollywood movie machine.
At the same time, Van Damme is obviously in fantastic shape – much better than some of Hollywood’s other aging action stars who continue to make action movies without regard or reference to their age — so there’s something doubly pleasing about watching him play Johnson.
Amazon
Comrade Detective
Comrade Detective is an unusual addition to the Amazon Original roster. It is elaborately presented as a lost Romanian detective series that aired in the ’80s and was intended to promote communism throughout the country.
The propaganda is hilariously unsubtle — but played with straight-faced — satirical brilliance by both its Romanian actors and by the English voiceover stars Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And while obviously meant as a comedy, there is something we can learn from the “communist” view of our toxic capitalist society.
The Americans in the show are greedy, uncouth, short-sighted, and self-destructive. While they play as cartoon villains, its perhaps not an unfair depiction of how our materialistic and consumerist tendencies hurt ourselves, our environment, our economy, and others.
Comrade Detective itself is fun, fast-paced, and action-packed, with an interesting mystery and some awesome ’80s fashion sense.
Amazon
I Love Dick
I Love Dick is an unusual, sensual, awkward, funny, and touching show about a struggling married couple who move from New York City to Marfa, Texas and become obsessed with a cowboy artist and scholar named Dick (Kevin Bacon).
Based on a feminist novel by Chris Kraus and written and directed exclusively by women, it is also unusual for the way that it gives the female gaze an outlet.
In film and television, we are used to seeing women portrayed as sexual objects as seen through the male gaze. In this case, Kevin Bacon is reduced to a sexual object as seen by the main character Chris.
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He is often filmed in sensual or seductive fantasies, the camera often segmenting him into his parts, fetishizing his body rather than taking him as a whole. It is so unusual to see men portrayed this way on film that it is almost disconcerting — perhaps also because it is erotic in a way specifically tailored for a straight woman’s perspective.
Unfortunately, there is the one and only season of I Love Dick, but that makes it a short and sweet binge.
Amazon
Honorable Mentions
Considering the general quality of Amazon’s programming, it can be difficult to choose just six shows from its collection. I was initially excited to write about The Night Manager when I found out this wasn’t actually an Amazon Original.
Still, though, you should check that out. One that I had a hard time letting go of was a female lead British comedy called Fleabag, which is very funny, very unique, and a precious voice of female experience.
The same writer just premiered a female lead crime thriller on BBC America called Killing Eve that I hear would attract fans of Hannibal.
Next: 15 most influential women in TV history
Tin Star was another one that caught my eye, a crime thriller starring Tim Roth with a tense and bloody opening that draws you into the “one year earlier” main story.