You’re likely already an Amazon Prime subscriber, so why aren’t you taking advantage of all of the insanely good television hiding on the streaming platform? From award-winning comedy series to big-budget fantasy epics, Amazon Prime Video is one of the few platforms taking risks and delivering show-stopping TV right now, and its catalog is only growing.
To help whittle down the best binge-watches, we’ve carefully curated a list that has something for everyone — think bloody superhero brawls, paranormal comedies, hardboiled legal dramas, dusty Westerns, and more. So really, there’s no excuse not to start tuning in.
You can see the full list of the best Amazon Prime shows below:
Last updated on February 24, 2023.
1. Fleabag
Year: 2016
Cast: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sian Clifford, Olivia Colman, Andrew Scott
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 2 seasons: 12 episodes
Created By: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Trailer: Watch here
Raunchy, riotous, and revolutionary. When Phoebe Waller-Bridge turned her one-woman stage production into a fourth-wall-breaking comedic masterpiece on Amazon Prime a few years ago, TV shows everywhere took notice. Many have tried to replicate, but none have captured the dry-witted humor and brutally insightful poignancy of the mold they’re homaging. Bridge plays a 30-something Brit only identified as the titular Fleabag, a woman with emotional baggage that takes increasingly bizarre, problematic, and frankly, hilarious forms — a Guinea Pig Cafe, sexual trysts with Bus Rodents, familial squabbles, blasphemous confessional hook-ups with the Hot Priest, and a suicide attempt. This eventually becomes a love story, one more fixated on the kind of self-love Fleabag so desperately needs, but Andrew Scott’s foul-mouthed Father does inspire more than a bit of swooning in season two.
2. The Boys
Year: 2019
Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 3 seasons: 24 episodes
Created By: Eric Kripke
Trailer: Watch here
A wild, vulgar, berserker of a comic book adaptation, The Boys takes swing after swing at the very superhero verse its characters belong to. Created by Eric Kripke based on a Garth Ennis series, this show pulls absolutely no punches, delivering stomach-churning, awe-inspiring action sequences that are so gory, so nasty, you can’t possibly turn away. The premise follows a group of unexceptional vigilantes who recognize the superpowered gods among them have amassed too much, well, power. Karl Urban’s wise-cracking Billy Butcher has a personal axe to grind with Antony Starr’s deliciously evil, over-the-top Homelander (basically Superman if he had even bigger daddy issues), so he teams up with Jack Quaid’s Hughie to form a group of outcasts who just might be able to bring these corrupt Supes down a peg. Of course, they’ll have to sacrifice some marine mammals in the process.
3. Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power
Year: 2022
Cast: Morfydd Clark, Charlie Vickers, Ismael Cruz Cordova
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 season: 9 episodes
Created By: Patrick McKay, John D. Payne
Trailer: Watch here
Adapting Tolkien is a tall order. Adapting an unfinished Tolkien work on the heels of Peter Jackson’s uber-successful film series is a near-impossible task. But somehow, this “prequel” does it, delivering epic storytelling and breathtaking visuals but pairing them with the kind of world-building and character-driven storytelling LOTR fans love so much. Spanning the rarely written about Second Age, the show follows new and familiar faces as they meet a new evil threatening Middle Earth. The cast is diverse, the action exciting, and the fantasy vibes are off the charts. Plus, this is one of the few newcomers to not only stick the landing for its final season but use to it shake up the chessboard and keep fans guessing into season two.
4. The English
Year: 2022
Cast: Emily Blunt, Chaske Spencer
Genre: Western, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 6 episodes
Created By: Hugo Blick
Trailer: Watch here
Sure, this Emily Blunt-starring mini-series delivers the exact amount of saloon shootouts and dust-ridden standoffs you’d expect from a show set in the Wild West of the 1800s. It even follows some tried-and-true tropes of the genre with its hero (heroine here) out for revenge on the wild open plains. But there’s something undeniably fresh and original about showrunner Hugo Blick’s tale, which sees Blunt’s Cornelia Locke partnering with an ex-calvary scout from the Pawnee Nation named Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer) to hunt down the men responsible for the death of her son. The two have a push-and-pull that eventually reveals harsh truths, not only about themselves but the way of the world, and those epiphanies land harder because Blick makes room for quieter, character-driven moments amidst all the violence and bloodshed endemic of the times.
5. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Year: 2015
Cast: Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Borstein, Tony Shalhoub, Marin Hinkle
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 4 seasons: 35 episodes
Created By: Amy Sherman-Palladino
Trailer: Watch here
Amy Sherman-Palladino follows up her Gilmore Girls success with another fast-talking, dry-witted dramedy, this time starring Rachel Brosnahan as a 1950s housewife with a hidden talent for stand-up comedy. Brosnahan plays Midge Masel, a young Jewish woman living an upper-crust New York City life when her marriage suddenly falls apart, and her natural affinity for comedy becomes the vehicle she uses to strike out on her own. Alex Borstein plays Susie, a club promoter who sees Midge’s potential and eventually becomes her manager while Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle play her parents Abe and Rose Wiessman. Brosnahan is undeniably the star here but it’s Midge’s friendship with Susie and their shared determination to make it in a man’s world that will keep you watching.
6. Good Omens
Year: 2019
Cast: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Frances McDormand, Jon Hamm
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy
Rating: TV_MA
Runtime: 1 season: 6 episodes
Created By: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
Trailer: Watch here
David Tennant and Michael Sheen star in this hellishly fun adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved work of fantasy. Tennant plays Crowley, a demon who’s spent spent thousands of years, 6,000 to be exact, living life as a kind of rockstar on Earth. Sheen plays his angelic counterpart, Aziraphale, a bumbling seraph who also calls Earth home and has a reluctant friendship with his immortal enemy. The two must band together to prevent the Anti-Christ — a kid in Oxfordshire — from rising to power, destroying the world, and, most importantly, Crowley’s best of Queen mixtape.
7. Invincible
Year: 2021
Cast: Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons
Genre: Animation, Action
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Cory Walker
Trailer: Watch here
Robert Kirkman builds on his track record of turning comic book favorites into worthwhile TV shows with this animated adaptation that stars his Walking Dead buddy Steven Yeun and a host of other A-list talents. Yeun voices a teenager named Mark Grayson, whose dad is an all-powerful being known as Omni-Man (JK Simmons). Grayson has abilities of his own, and he’s trying to walk in his father’s footsteps but some bloody storytelling twists elevate the show’s premise to something infinitely more exciting than its Marvel-esque beginnings. If anything, this show continues the tradition of investigating our habit of superhero worship that The Boys does so well, albeit in cartoon form.
8. Jack Ryan
Year: 2018
Cast: John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly
Genre: Action, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 3 seasons: 24 episodes
Created By: Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland
Trailer: Watch here
John Krasinski’s return to television marks a dramatic departure from his Office days. Here, he plays famed CIA analyst Jack Ryan in a series that explores the character’s beginnings as an up-and-coming agent whose confidence in his abilities often lead to him clashing with higher-ups like his boss, James Greer (a fantastic Wendell Pierce). In its latest installment, Ryan finds himself on the wrong side of the law when a hunch that Russia is resurrecting a Cold War plan to destablize Europe puts him at odds with his own government. There’s enough spy-thriller action to keep fans on the edge of their seat and Krasinski delivers a well-rounded action hero who’s easy to root for.
9. ZeroZeroZero
Year: 2019
Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Dane DeHaan, Gabriel Byrne
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Leonardo Fasoli, Mauricio Katz, Stefano Sollima
Trailer: Watch here
This Italian crime drama is a unique blend of three separate stories, all thrilling in their own right but, when combined, make for an epic, action-packed adventure. One thread follows a pair of Mexican druglords helped in their business pursuits by a corrupt military. Another focuses on a Mafia-like crime syndicate in Italy thrown into chaos when its boss is challenged by a rival family member. The final storyline unites these two, centering on an American family whose shipping business transports large amounts of cocaine between the Mexican and Italian sides. When one such shipment is diverted, disaster strikes, forcing everyone to get a bit more cutthroat in order to come out on top.
10. Outer Range
Year: 2022
Cast: Josh Brolin, Imogen Poots, Will Patton, Lewis Pullman
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Brian Watkins
Trailer: Watch here
Think Yellowstone meets The Twilight Zone, and you’ll come close to grasping the sci-fi sky-country vibes of this Josh Brolin-starring series. There are the normal soap opera elements that make for juicy drama — feuding families, rival ranches, etc. — but they’re all elevated by a central mystery that incorporates some mind-bending genre tropes to great effect. Brolin plays Royal Abbott, a quiet rancher fighting to save his family after tragedy strikes. When he discovers a black void hidden in one of his pastures, he’s forced to question where he comes from and the nature of more abstract concepts like time, space, and the meaning behind it all. It’s weird, it’s eerie, and it makes for a riveting binge-watch.
11. LuLaRich
Year: 2021
Cast: DeAnne Stidham, Mark Stidham
Genre: Documentary
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 season: 4 episodes
Created By: Jenner Furst, Julia Willoughby Nason
Trailer: Watch here
Multi-level marketing scams are a true crime goldmine but even the wildest pyramid scheme put to camera has nothing on this story of a stretchy legging empire run by brightly patterned, highly-caffeinated Mormon overlords. What begins as an empowering tale of entrepreneurship (a housewife selling maxi skirts from her trunk to make ends meet) snowballs into a weird, prosperity gospel garbage fire filled with Tijuana Skinnies group chat members, fart-smelling leggings, weaponized oral sex acts, and hellish company cruises. It’s the “Fyre Festival” of online retail, and you won’t be able to look away.
12. The Underground Railroad
Year: 2021
Cast: Thuso Mbedu, Joel Edgerton, William Jackson Harper
Genre: History, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 10 episodes
Created By: Barry Jenkins
Trailer: Watch here
Barry Jenkins gives audiences a beautiful, moving portrait of the Black experience with this fantastical adaptation of a 2016 novel by Colson Whitehead. The series tells the story of a runaway slave named Cora (a sublime Thuso Mbedu) who is hunted by a dogged and dangerous catcher named Arnold Ridgeway (a menacing Joel Edgerton). As in the book, the show imagines the Underground Railroad not as a series of safe houses slaves used to escape the South, by as an actual, working entity with conductors, railworker, and underground tunnels that ferry fugitives across state lines. It’s magical realism done with careful thought for character development and storytelling and it’s one of the most thrilling, emotional, and inspiring POVs of the time period we’ve seen thus far.
13. Bosch
Year: 2014
Cast: Titus Welliver, Jamie Hector
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 7 seasons: 68 episodes
Created By: Eric Ellis Overmyer
Trailer: Watch here
Bosch takes an often-done police procedural trope, turns the dial up to 11, and lets lead Titus Welliver have unseemly amounts of fun playing a rogue detective charged with solving increasingly grisly crimes each season. Harry Bosch is a bit of a formulaic character — a former military man, a rule-follower, and truth-searcher, but Welliver gives him the right amount of sass to make his case-load — which includes everything from corrupt cops and conspiracies to solving his own mother’s murder — that much more interesting.
14. Hanna
Year: 2019
Cast: Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman
Genre: Action, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 3 seasons: 22 episodes
Created By: David Farr
Trailer: Watch here
Based on the 2011 film of the same name, this action-adventure series only gets better with each season, building a mythology around its titular character that its feature-length counterpart just didn’t have time for. Esme Creed-Miles plays Hanna, a young girl living an isolated life in the Polish wilderness with her father Erik (Joel Kinnaman). Erik was once part of a government program that recruited pregnant women to experiment on their unborn children, essentially creating super soldiers. Hanna is one-such child, but Erik rescued her after falling in love with her mother. He teaches her to become expert assassin, training that comes in handy when the program hunts down its lost property, thrusting them both into a global conspiracy that puts their relationship to the ultimate test.
15. Flack
Year: 2019
Cast: Anna Paquin, Lydia Wilson, Rebecca Benson
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 2 seasons: 12 episodes
Created By: Oliver Lansley
Trailer: Watch here
Anna Paquin plays an out-of-control fixer in this quick-burn British comedy series that’s a surprisingly addictive watch. Paquin’s Robyn is an American PR exec living in London with her loving boyfriend and sister. She’s tasked with making the problems of her very messy, very high-profile clients quietly disappear in whatever ways she deems fit. The problem: her personal life is just as chaotic as her professional one and when they start to mix, Robyn’s method of “fixing” grows increasingly problematic — and hilarious.
16. The Legend of Vox Machina
Year: 2022
Cast: Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jefferson, Ashley Johnson
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 12 episodes
Created By: Chris Prynoski
Trailer: Watch here
If you’re a fan of Dungeons & Dragons style RPGs, then you likely already know of this beautifully animated series (which just got renewed for a third season). But even if massive video-game epics aren’t your thing, there’s something whimsical, thrilling, and addictive about this show that’s set prior to its web series counterpart, Critical Role. It follows a seven-member Vox Machina team on their first real mission which takes them across the continent of Tal’Dorei and sees them avenging murders and rescuing entire towns in need.
17. Hunters
Year: 2020
Cast: Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, Lena Olin
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 2 seasons: 20 episodes
Created By: David Weil
Trailer: Watch here
Al Pacino leads a group of Nazi hunters in this thrilling crime drama set in late ’70s New York. Pacino’s Meyer Offerman is a Holocaust survivor and philanthropist who runs a secret group trying to prevent numerous escaped Nazis from enacting their plan to establish the Fourth Reicht. Each Hunter has a specific skill set that comes in handy for certain missions, with Logan Lerman’s brilliant mathematician student being the newest addition to the group. The show’s central question, “Would you do bad things for the good of humankind?” is an intriguing one that hasn’t really been asked like this before.
18. The Peripheral
Year: 2022
Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Jack Reynor
Genre: Sci-Fi, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Scott B. Smith, William Gibson
Trailer: Watch here
Chloe Grace Moretz stars in this futuristic mystery series that’s a total mindf*ck, but in the best way. Moretz plays Flynne, a young woman living in a future where reality is subtly altered thanks to VR tech. When Flynne is sent the blueprint for a new kind of headset, she initially thinks she’s just playing a game but the digital world quickly bleeds into her reality, and she learns she’s got a dark and dangerous future ahead of her.
19. Tell Me Your Secrets
Year: 2021
Cast: Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Amy Brenneman
Genre: Crime, Mystery
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 season: 10 episodes
Created By: Harriet Warner
Trailer: Watch here
This series starring Lily Rabe and Amy Brenneman investigates the fine line between victim and perpetrator by way of three separate stories that have surprising connections through guilt and grief. Brenneman plays Mary, a mother whose daughter is believed to have been murdered by a convicted serial killer. Rabe plays Emma, the girlfriend of said serial killer, recently released from jail for aiding in his crimes and trying to start a new life in Louisianna. Hamish Linklater’s John is the third player in this story, a serial rapist looking for redemption. Each try to move past their sins, to evolve into functioning members of society, and each are eventually forced to reckon with their true natures because of that.
20. Reacher
Year: 2022
Cast: Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season, 8 episodes
Created By: Nick Santora
Trailer: Watch here
No offense to Tom Cruise, but this is the Jack Reacher adaptation that fans deserved. Based on the book series by Lee Child, this show introduces the drifter and ex-military man to audiences by way of actor Alan Ritchson, whose bulk and stony demeanor feel bit more faithful to the source material. Reacher visit a rural Georgia town in the show’s first season and finds himself arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. When law enforcement wises up to his innocence, he decides to track down the killer himself, a hunt that leads him into the thick of a conspiracy filled with corrupt cops, shady businessman, and cutthroat politicians.
21. Goliath
Year: 2016
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Nina Ariande, Tania Raymonde
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 4 seasons: 32 episodes
Created By: David E. Kelley, Jonathan Shapiro
Trailer: Watch here
This gritty legal drama starring Billy Bob Thornton as a washed up alcoholic lawyer is the kind of all meat, no-fat storytelling you’d expect from David E. Kelley (the guy who gave us Boston Legal and Ally McBeal). Thornton plays Billy McBride, a prodigious attorney who walks away from his firm after a case gone horribly wrong. He’s pulled back into the legal drama when an investigation into a big tech firm falls into his lap. The courtroom theatrics are dialed down a notch here in favor of showing McBride’s troubled personal life and the increasingly problematic ways he manages his guilt — all to say, it’s the perfect kind of show for Thornton, who excels at playing the gruff, silent, burdened anti-hero.
22. A League of Their Own
Year: 2022
Cast: Abbi Jacobson, D’Arcy Carden, Nick Offerman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Abbi Jacobson, Will Graham
Trailer: Watch here
Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson gives this beloved baseball story a reboot that manages to improve on the original while bringing Queer storytelling to the forefront. Jacobson plays Carson Shaw, a small-town girl who leaves her old life behind to join a professional women’s baseball league during WWII. While the men are off at war, the women get a chance to play, and Carson discovers more about herself than just the sport can teach her. Jacobson’s terrific here, but The Good Place star D’Arcy Carden carries the show and makes every scene she’s in electric.
23. Paper Girls
Year: 2022
Cast: Camryn Jones, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet
Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Stephany Folsom
Trailer: Watch here
Based on a comic book series by Brian K. Vaughn, this ’80s Sci-Fi adventure series continues on the tradition of kids saving the world from monstrous threats that Stranger Things has made so popular. Here, four young girls just trying to finish their paper route on the night of Halloween get pulled into a war between two sets of time-travelling factions that could decide the fate of mankind. It’s funny and mind-bending and filled with cozy nostalgia.
24. The Expanse
Year: 2015
Cast: Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham
Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 6 seasons: 62 episodes
Created By: Mark Fergus, Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck
Trailer: Watch here
This Sci-Fi space epic based off a series of beloved books found new life on Amazon for its fourth season after being canceled by Syfy in 2018 which was good news for fans who wanted more adventures for the show’s rag-tag band of anti-heroes. Set in the future when humanity has colonized the Solar System, The Expanse follows a trio of leads: United Nations Security Council member Chrisjen Avasarala, police detective Josephus Miller, and ship’s officer James Holden as they unravel a conspiracy that could break the uneasy peace. It’s full of action and thriller-like twists, but it’s the memorable, well-rounded character work that makes this a must-see.
25. The Wheel Of Time
Year: 2021
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney, Madeleine Madden
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 season, 10 episodes
Created By:
Trailer: Watch here
Based on a best-selling series of books, this high-fantasy adaptation charts a lot of ground in its first season. Set in a world where magic exists but only a select few can access it, the show follows a powerful woman named Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), who must guide five young men and women on a dangerous journey to save their world. It’s a less-complicated follow-along than something like The Rings of Power with a fantastic magical system and plenty of action to keep things interesting.
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