42 best Amazon Prime Video movies and TV shows to watch today

Set in Auschwitz during the Second World War, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-nominated film is unlike any other ‘Holocaust movie’ you’ve seen. And, despite there being no on-screen violence whatsoever, it’s profoundly disturbing and bleak – perhaps because its portrayal of evil applies just as much to today’s world as it does to the 1940s.

Through a naturalistic, almost documentarian recreation of the daily lives of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family, who live in a house adjoining the concentration camp, The Zone of Interest depicts its horrors only through oblique reference and sound: the barely registered pop of a gunshot; a servant diligently washing blood from Höss’s boots; his wife trying on clothes looted from inmates; the glow from the gas ovens filtering through the curtains. By making us question how the family can live so comfortably alongside mass slaughter and suffering, Glazer seems to be prodding the viewer to ask the same of ourselves.

Watch The Zone of Interest on Prime Video

In general, video game adaptations been received about as well as a Lego brick to the sole of the foot, but Fallout (like The Last of Us) bucks the trend – and how. Developed by Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy with the cooperation of Bethesda Game Studios, it not only captures the retro-futuristic aesthetic and knowing humour of the source material but succeeds in being a watchable, entertaining show – even for those totally unfamiliar with the games.

It achieves this via the old-fashioned arts of deft worldbuilding, relatable characters and an involving plot, which follows a naïve vault-dweller as she emerges into the irradiated post-nuclear wasteland that was once California to track down her kidnapped father.

Watch Fallout on Prime Video

This Oscar-winning thriller, based on Robert Harris’ novel, takes place over a few eventful days in the Vatican. The pope has passed away, and the world’s cardinals have gathered for a conclave, the somewhat arcane selection process that will determine the identity of his successor. With several controversial candidates in the running, it’s a challenging process to oversee for Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals – especially since he finds himself dragged into investigating a potential conspiracy at the same time.

Conclave is a tightly scripted pot-boiler with fantastic work from Fiennes and a talented supporting cast. Dripping with intrigue and suspense, and erring just on the right side of sensationalism, it’s a cracking watch.

Watch Conclave on Prime Video

Spike Jonze’s drama follows Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), an empathetic and newly single man who makes his living by writing heartfelt letters on behalf of clients who feel unable to.

This being the near future, he finds himself using an advanced new OS, which adapts to become an intuitive personal assistant for each individual user. His own AI is named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and surprisingly witty, warm and sensitive. Theodore quickly forms an attachment with it – or her – that blossoms into a romantic interest, but what does it mean to fall in love with a bodyless computer? The film offers few easy answers, but it’s a beautiful musing on the changing nature of our relationship with technology. A less cynical, feature-length Black Mirror episode, if you will.

Watch Her on Prime Video

Lee Childs’ tremendously popular series of novels regularly describe their hero Jack Reacher as a 6’5” man mountain. His size and stature are pretty much the first thing anybody who meets him comments on – so casting the notably non-mountainous Tom Cruise as Reacher in two Hollywood movies always seemed like a misstep. Amazon’s original series remedies this by putting towering hunk Alan Ritchson in Reacher’s boots, but it’s also a brilliantly watchable, breakneck thriller that emulates the novels’ brisk, gripping pace.

Reacher is built like a brick outhouse and only marginally more talkative, but he’s blessed with a keen intelligence, a heart of gold and the ability to absolutely annihilate any lowlife who gets in his way. When he wanders into a small Georgia town and finds himself arrested for murder, all his wits, wiles and muscles are all called into action.

Watch Reacher on Prime Video

Not to be confused with the movie that inspired it – and from which it draws its winning blend of dark deeds, intricate plotting, looming dread and comic “Minnesota nice” dialogue – this is yet another TV series that begs to be binge-watched over a weekend.

Martin Freeman, Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman all deliver fine performances as residents of the snowbound titular town, but it’s Billy Bob Thornton, oozing malevolence and menace as drifter Lorne Malvo, who lingers longest in the memory.

Once that’s out of the way, the fantastic second, third and fourth series are also on Prime for you to devour too – and each features a different story, with a totally different cast, set at a totally different time.

Watch Fargo on Prime Video

The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman brings another of his cult comic books to the screen. This adult animated series tells the story of a teenage superhero coming to terms with his newfound powers – and dealing with the fact that his father is the most powerful and famous masked crusader on the planet.

If that sounds like something you’ve seen a thousand times before in superhero fiction, we urge you to give it a chance anyway: the show throws a shocking curveball early on that is guaranteed to make you pay attention. Stephen Yuen, J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Mahershala Ali and Mark Hamill are among the star-studded voice cast.

Watch Invincible on Amazon Prime Video

This moving and grimly violent miniseries (co-created by Amazon with the BBC) stars Emily Blunt as a British aristocrat brought to the American West in search of revenge. Her orbit collides with Chaske Spencer’s Eli Whipp, a Native American former army scout on his own journey, and the pair gradually uncover the shocking details of a shared past as they traverse the dust-covered, blood-drenched plains and prairies of the frontier. Brutal and beautiful in equal measure, with a shock around every corner, The English is guaranteed to take you on an emotional rollercoaster over its six episodes.

Watch The English on Prime Video

The second of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright “Cornetto Trilogy”, Hot Fuzz takes on the action blockbuster genre in the same way as Shaun of the Dead skewered zombie flicks – by making them into a comedy movie packed to the gills with the genre’s tropes and traits. It’s both parody and love letter, and the whole feels greater than the sum of its parts.

Hot Fuzz – in which Pegg’s London supercop is seconded to a sleepy West Country town’s police service as punishment for making the rest of the Met look bad – is absolutely hilarious. The one-liners, sight gags come at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them speed. But it’s also a warm, brilliantly edited and distinctly English homage to the likes of Point Break, Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys.

Watch Hot Fuzz on Prime Video

Loosely by the real-life shenanigans of Dreams-era Fleetwood Mac, this miniseries (based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid) recounts the rise and fall of a 1970s rock band, told as former members recount the truth about the group’s breakup for a documentary.

The series – an Amazon production – stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin as the band’s feuding lead singers and features a ton of original 1970s-style tunes, and overall it’s plush, shiny and pristine – perhaps a little too much for its subject matter, which desperately wants to be edgy but never feels quite as convincingly dark as it should be. Even so, the songs, production design and compelling inter-character relationships make it an addictive and enjoyable watch.

Watch Daisy Jones & The Six on Prime Video

Remember buddy cop movies? Tango and Cash. 48 Hrs. Rush Hour. Red Heat. Blue Streak. Lethal Weapon. A bit of action, a bit of comedy, a lot of fun. Weren’t they great? Shame they don’t make them anymore.

But wait! What’s this? It’s a buddy cop (ok, buddy private detective) movie! From Shane Black – the bloke who wrote the first two Lethal Weapon films! And it stars Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling!

If that sounds like a great recipe to you, you’re going to love The Nice Guys. It’s brilliantly silly at times, gloriously action-packed at others, and the chemistry between its two stars is superb. The fact it hasn’t had a sequel yet is nothing short of a travesty.

Watch The Nice Guys on Prime Video

Michael Mann’s 1995 action-thriller is perhaps best known for putting Robert De Niro and Al Pacino on screen together for the first time. But aside from this impressive feat of casting, it’s a belting, influential movie that everyone should watch at least once.

De Niro plays a stoic master thief planning the perfect pre-retirement robbery, while Pacino plays the live-wire Los Angeles detective determined to stop him. It’s a simple setup, but the two legendary leads’ performances, the dynamic between their characters and the film’s exceptionally directed heist scenes give Heat a depth, atmosphere and impact that endures 30 years on.

Watch Heat on Prime Video

Deep and crisp and even it may be, but the Antarctic snow of John Carpenter’s cult classic is far from pure. Because there’s something very gnarly waiting underneath.

This movie’s titular parasitic extra-terrestrial, unwittingly woken from an aeons-long icy slumber beneath the permafrost, is able to assume human form, leading to near-unbearable suspense (who is human, and who is the alien?) as the inhabitants of a remote research station are preyed upon in gruesome fashion.

The cast, led by a luxuriantly bearded Kurt Russell, do an admirable job of portraying the paranoia and tension as they’re picked off one by one by the shape-changing creature. Wonderfully creepy stuff from a horror master.

Watch The Thing on Prime Video

One of the few Amazon originals made specifically for its ad-supported Freevee offshoot (which means you don’t need a full Prime account to watch – just the ability to sit through a few unavoidable commercial breaks), this brilliant reality show from the creators of the American Office is a fly-on-the-wall series about the ups and downs of serving on a jury.

The thing is, aside from a single member of the jury who’s not in on the joke, every person on-screen is an actor: the other jurors, the judge, the bailiffs, the lawyers and everyone else involved in the trial know exactly what’s going on. So, like some massively extended Beadle’s About skit, our unfortunate mark is dragged into all manner of awkward and embarrassing situations for the viewer’s amusement. Cruel perhaps, but brilliant all the same.

Watch Jury Duty on Freevee

Don’t let this South Korean horror movie’s 2.5-hour runtime put you off. Atmospheric, disturbing and often incongruously funny, this is a masterpiece of disquiet and tension that’ll sit with you long after the final credits roll.

When a series of grisly killings occur in a quiet mountain community, suspicion and superstition run rife. The spotlight quickly falls on an eccentric Japanese man who lives out in the woods, but the investigation into the murders is far from straightforward, leaving both the protagonists and the audience in an almost permanent state of discomfort. As a horror film this really has it all, and goes to some extremely uncomfortable places, all while keeping you constantly guessing until the end. Masterful.

Watch The Wailing on Prime Video

It might have started life as a pale imitation of the British original, but NBC’s long-running sitcom swiftly found its feet and its own comedic voice. Even if Steve Carell’s Michael Scott is a bit broader and slightly less melancholy than Ricky Gervais’ David Brent, it’s hard to deny that Carell has made the role of “awkward boss at a mid-level paper company” his own, and himself into a massive star in the process.

You probably already know the setup: The Office is a sort-of mockumentary set in a dreary Pennsylvania workplace populated by a few normal folks – representing us, the viewers – and a bunch of caricatures. The comedy mostly springs from the interactions between the two groups, and the formula works so well that NBC managed to keep it going for an astonishing nine seasons.

Watch The Office on Prime Video

A rare example of a psychological horror movie picking up Best Picture at the Oscars, this 1991 adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel introduced the cinematic world to Dr Hannibal Lecter. He’s an extraordinarily perceptive psychiatrist – and a cannibalistic killer in his spare time. A neat twist is the fact that Lecter – played here with delicious creepiness by Anthony Hopkins – isn’t even the film’s big bad guy. He’s just the only means of stopping him, and a young FBI agent must build a rapport with this incarcerated monster in order to track down an active serial killer. As they say, it takes a thief to catch a thief…

While the horror in this movie is more psychological than visceral, there’s more than enough gore to keep slasher aficionados happy. More importantly, even non-horror fans will enjoy the craft and care of the film, with fantastic performances and a brilliant script full of memorable lines. You’ll never think of fava beans and a nice Chianti in the same way again.

Watch The Silence of the Lambs on Prime Video

Hankering for a grown-up TV show in the vein of Mad Men? One also set in mid-century Manhatten? The Marvelous Mrs Maisel might be the new series for you.

Rachel Brosnahan stars as Miriam “Midge” Maisel, a vivacious, quick-witted upper middle class housewife with what she thought was the perfect 1950s New York lifestyle: husband, kids, beautiful Upper West Side apartment; the works. When things take an unforeseen turn and flip that all upside down, she stumbles into trying out standup comedy – and discovers she has something of a talent for not only making people laugh, but for hitting upon life’s truths and enigmas while doing it.

The first season won three Golden Globes and five Emmys, suggesting this Amazon Original may have an even bigger future ahead than Transparent.

Watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime

Ari Aster’s debut feature starts out like a family drama with some piquant supernatural seasoning. Then, it abruptly changes direction and ends as… well, we wouldn’t want to risk ruining a ride filled with more gut-wrenching twists than a runaway rollercoaster.

After her secretive, prickly mother dies, Toni Collette’s Annie begins to examine the ways in which her behaviour affected everyone around her. Annie’s son Peter and daughter Charlie, in particular, seem troubled by unspecified pressures. When these troubles come to the fore, first comes tragedy, then panic and, eventually, a full-on nightmare.

If you’re looking for a clever, thought-provoking film that retains the power to shock – a modern movie that’s very much in the same mould as the likes of The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby or Don’t Look Now – look no further. Hereditary is a worthy successor to those classics, and now a cult classic itself.

Watch Hereditary on Prime Video

Created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, Swarm is a riotously creative comedy-horror series about the destructive potential of toxic fandom. Our anti-heroine Dre (superbly played by Dominique Fishback) is shy, quiet and socially inept, but feels empowered in her membership of ‘The Swarm’, the obsessive online fanbase surrounding global popstar Ni’Jah (clearly inspired by real-life idol Beyoncé).

When a family tragedy coincides with the surprise release of Ni’Jah’s latest album and video, the apparent relationship between the two events sends Dre over the edge into a deranged orgy of violent, psychotic behaviour. A dark, disturbing and entertaining exploration of ‘stan culture’ that’s among Prime’s best original series.

Watch Swarm on Prime Video

This brilliant spoof reality series, in which deadpan Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder swoops in to save ailing businesses with absolutely woeful (but somehow incredibly clever) advice, has largely flown under the radar this side of the pond, but do yourself a favour and give it a shot. Often so surreal, awkward and bizarre that it’s hard to believe Fielding’s unsuspecting clients aren’t in on the joke (they’re not), Nathan For You is a true comedy original.

Watch Nathan For You on Prime Video

A love triangle plays out on the tennis court in Luca Guadagnino’s sultry sports drama concerning two former best friends and the superstar coach they fell out over.

The expertly edited final reel, which makes superb use of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, gets all the plaudits, but it wouldn’t mean a thing without all of the great work done by the cast’s central trio of Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, whose complex romantic history is brilliantly revealed in flashback. When that ending does come, it feels earned, inevitable and somehow completely shocking at the same time.

Watch Challengers on Prime Video

What if superheroes were not only real, but as messed up and prone to bad behaviour as the rest of us. That’s the premise behind this superb comic book adaptation, in the world’s most famous costumed crusaders are owned and controlled by Vought, a ruthless corporation that keeps their misdeeds – which range from voyeurism and drug abuse to outright murderous psychopathy – under wraps in order to keep the cash flowing.

When one outrage leaves a young man bereaved and hellbent on revenge, he joins a group of like-minded vigilantes with the aim of bringing down Vought once and for all. Effortlessly blending humour, action and drama, The Boys manages to be Amazon’s best original series in ages.

Watch The Boys on Amazon Prime

Sitting at the top of many a cineaste’s best-of list, Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia epic is simply great filmmaking all round. This first film in the trilogy follows the efforts of ageing family patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) as he seeks to hand control of his empire over to his youngest son Michael – a reluctant gangster who has long committed himself to a life on the straight and narrow. But he soon realises there’s no clean way to run a crime family.

The Godfather feels like the meeting point between the glamour and glitz of old Hollywood and the freewheeling, boundary-pushing fairground that was 1970s American cinema. It’s a beautifully shot story that hits all the right beats, and deserves its place as a classic movie – and arguably the greatest American film ever made.

Watch The Godfather on Prime Video

Phoebe Waller-Bridge writes and stars in this beloved sitcom about a single woman’s attempts to navigate the many pitfalls of modern London life: love, family, work. Even if that sounds like a hackneyed synopsis, or one that could describe something in the region of 10,000 British sitcoms, you should delve into Fleabag anyway; Waller-Bridge’s eyes-open approach – acerbic, unashamed, raw – doesn’t feel unoriginal in the slightest. It’s also extremely funny, which is probably worth mentioning too.

Watch Fleabag on Amazon Prime

George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is one of the most iconic and influential horror movies of all time. When an outbreak of the undead ushers in the fall of civilization, a quartet of survivors decamp to an abandoned shopping mall in a bid for safety – only to discover that the shambling brain-chomping hordes have also found themselves drawn to this palace of consumerism.

You’d have to be braindead to miss the satire, sure – but there’s so much else going on here that it hardly matters. Zack Snyder’s 21st-century reimagining isn’t a patch on this for atmosphere, and the practical effects and prog-rock synth score give it an eerie atmosphere you simply don’t get with modern horror flicks.

Watch Dawn of the Dead on Prime Video

This Australian indie horror movie is likely to stick with you for some time. In addition to all the thrills, spills and chills you’d expect from a standard horror flick, The Babadook has something extra hidden in its basement under the stairs: smarts.

Yes, this film will fray your nerves like wool dragged across a barbed wire fence, but it’s also a meditation on loss and trauma. Can widowed mother Amelia finally lay the repressed memory of her husband to rest and save her son Samuel from the malevolent force stalking them in the process? You’ll just have to watch this modern classic to find out.

Watch The Babadook on Amazon Prime Video

Based on the novels by James Connelly, Bosch is among Amazon’s most reliable original series. A super-authentic (or at least it feels that way) police procedural set in Los Angeles following the travails of homicide detective Harry Bosch, it’s proof that sometimes sticking to a formula really does work.

Bosch himself sounds like a walking cliché: a grizzled, no-nonsense cop with dark secrets lurking in his past, a love of jazz music and a low tolerance for pen-pushing superiors – but thanks to strong writing and Titus Welliver’s game performance, rooting for him as he navigates political machinations, corrupt colleagues and murderous criminals is never a problem.

Watch Bosch on Amazon Prime Video

Ruben is a noise-metal drummer, endlessly touring tiny venues with his partner Lou in a beaten-up RV, but the couple’s rootless but contented lifestyle comes to a sickening halt when Ruben begins to experience hearing loss. With the realisation that his career as a musician may be over, tempting him back to his old addict’s ways, Ruben checks himself into a rural deaf community – but he remains fiercely driven by a hope of fixing his affliction, getting back on tour and getting back to Lou.

Riz Ahmed is utterly fantastic in the lead role (Oscar-nominated, no less), but everything about Darius Marder’s debut movie works so well: the sound design that puts you in Ruben’s head; the supporting performances of Paul Raci and Olivia Cooke; and the themes of identity, dependence and acceptance that run through it.

Watch Sound of Metal on Amazon Prime Video

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, strangers who happen to be guests at the same wedding, find themselves stuck in a seemingly infinite time loop in this offbeat romantic comedy. If they fall asleep or die, they simple wake up once again and have to live the entire day through. Trapped together, the pair decide to make the most of their predicament, indulging in wilder and wilder behaviour in the knowledge that, whatever might happen, they’ll be back at square one eventually. Everything, it seems, has become meaningless.

If might sound like something you’ve seen before (“Groundhog Day!” we hear you scream), Palm Springs manages to feel different by dint of focussing on a pair of people rather than just one. The relationship and tensions between the two keep the film nicely involving – and it’s very funny to boot.

Watch Palm Springs on Amazon Prime Video

The political thriller sees Adam Driver’s character, Daniel Jones, set an assignment by the Senator Diane Feinstein (Annette Bening) to lead an investigation into the CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods during the Bush era.

The project engulfs Jones’ life, his relentless determination to complete his report almost jeopardizing his career and sacrificing any social or personal life, but the injustice and corruption at the heart of it are too important to ignore. The Report’s fast-paced narrative and sharp dialogue make it easy enough to follow, but some of the torture-scenes are hard to stomach. The fact it’s based on a true story is frightening.

Watch The Report on Amazon Prime Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyoXURn9oK0

Genres get hacked up as much as the unfortunate characters in S. Craig Zahler’s brutal directorial debut. This film starts out in familiar Western territory, but gradually descends into a nightmarish, schlocky horror flick – albeit one with some tension-shattering comedic dialogue and character moments. There’s an old-school video nasty vibe to Bone Tomahawk that you don’t often see in modern movies, not to mention a refreshing tendency to take its time.

Kurt Russell leads the strong cast (familiar faces Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox and Patrick Wilson also appear) as a stoic small-town sheriff spurred into action when a group of cave-dwelling Native Americans kidnap two of his townspeople. Resolving to rescue the victims and punish the perpetrators, a small posse ventures out into the dry, rocky wilderness, not realising what awaits them.

Watch Bone Tomahawk on Amazon Prime Video

A New Mexico switchboard operator hears a mysterious sound on her headset, sparking off a series of creepily escalating revelations in this retro sci-fi movie from first-time director Andrew Patterson.

From its late 1950s small town America setting to its sound design and music, The Vast of Night gleefully channels classic mystery shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and The X-Files, not to mention films like Super 8 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But it’s far from derivative, and its snappy dialogue and stylish camerawork give it a singular, stylish air. The plot might be fairly simple, the cast small and unknown, but Patterson makes the most of every cent of his tiny budget.

Watch The Vast of Night on Amazon Prime Video

This Amazon-funded reimagining of the Dario Argento classic will divide audiences. Ponderously paced and tottering under the weight of more themes and ideas than it knows what to do with, Suspiria is peak arthouse horror – and many will find the eventual bloodshed too little reward for the investment. Others will appreciate the movie’s strong sense of place (late 1970s Berlin, a city riven with political turmoil) and the way it generates an atmosphere of oppressive discomfort throughout with its use of sound effects, strange camera angles and Thom Yorke’s krautrock-inspired score.

Dakota Johnson stars as an unworldly young dancer joining a prestigious all-female company that just might be a coven of witches, while Tilda Swinton impresses in three separate roles.

Watch Suspiria on Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime recently acquired the first three seasons of this beloved space opera series, in which humanity has colonised the solar system amidst a looming conflict between Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt. It then financed and produced a fourth and fifth, injecting a bunch of cash into the series and giving the production values (already pretty high) a boost. At least one more season is coming too.

But that’s not to say that this is a show that lives and dies on its visuals. The Expanse will likely appeal to anyone who appreciates sprawling, critically-acclaimed and morally complex dramas – it’s like Game of Thrones with rail guns and zero-g instead of dragons and Valyrian steel. Better yet, it’s all available to stream in beautiful 4K UHD – provided you have a TV with the prerequisite number of pixels, natch.

Watch The Expanse on Amazon Prime

An office drone by day, Elliott Alderson (played brilliantly by Rami Malek) is also a morphine-dependent keyboard vigilante who hacks the lives of everyone he meets. That is until he’s lured in by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) to join the hacktivist group ‘F Society’, whose grand plan is to cancel world debt by attacking ubiquitous conglomerate E Corp (or Evil Corp, as Elliott calls it).

Cue a trip down a rabbit hole that twists through Lynchian dream sequences, episode-long musings about the hackability of human minds, and a mounting sense of paranoia that leaves you suspicious of everything down to Elliott’s malfunctioning radiator.

That Mr. Robot resists Hollywood’s ‘Computers for dummies’ approach to the Internet is just one of the reasons why it’s great. The others are that it’s stylishly shot, unpredictable and offers a new take on cyberpunk, while wearing its influences (The Matrix, Fight Club and American Psycho) as proudly as the badge on its title character’s shirt.

Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all available for binge-watching right now.

Watch Mr Robot on Amazon Prime Instant Video

A hidden gem in Amazon’s catalogue, Red Oaks‘ unremarkable premise belies a nuanced show that blends humour and pathos with surprising aplomb.

Set in ’80s New York suburbia, the show (now running to three full seasons) follows the bumbling but tumultuous life of David Myers. From the aloof love interest to parental turmoil at home, all the classic teen drama tropes are covered, with just enough of a twist to sustain your intrigue.

What really elevates this show above the many others that riff off a similar tune is its riotous roster of characters. Sleazy yet feckless tennis coach Nash alone is worth the price of admission.

Watch Red Oaks on Amazon Prime

What if the Allies had lost the Second World War, and America was currently ruled by Germany in its eastern half and Japan in its western half? Well, you can find out in this big budget Amazon Prime original series, a thriller which zips around a 1960s North America that’s more “Ja wohl!” than “Aw shucks!”.

Dealing with underground resistance groups, various plots and an alternative Cold War (waged between Imperial Japan and the German Reich, now the world’s only superpowers), it’s the kind of series that’ll appeal to history buffs, sci-fi fans and anyone who’s into high concept, high budget television.

Watch The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime Instant Video

The zombie apocalypse scenario has now been covered so many times that when the dead do eventually start clawing their way out of the ground in a shambling tide of brain-hungry violence, it’ll hardly be worth mentioning. That’s not to say that it doesn’t make cracking TV, though, and if you’re one of the few people who hasn’t yet seen The Walking Dead, there are a full nine seasons’ worth of horrific violence, bad decisions, cannibalism, baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire and more to enjoy!

Watch The Walking Dead on Amazon Prime Instant Video

Amazon’s been trying to “do a Netflix” by creating its very own blockbusting TV shows for ages now, but this is the first time it’s got it right. For a start, Transparent is really bold – it tells the story of a sixty-something divorcee announcing to his three grown-up kids that he’s always felt different and is now going to live as a woman.

Sounds heavy, and it sort of is, but it’s also darkly funny, with a degree of wit and sharpness that’s still rare even in this golden age of TV. The bickering between the three kids (each of whom is riddled with their own individual problems and peccadillos) is as chucklesome as it is awkward and real. Amazing telly.

Watch Transparent on Amazon Prime Instant Video now

This quirky espionage comedy-drama blends deadpan humour, action and a coterie of memorable characters into something that feels truly original. Michael Dorman excels as permanently put-upon CIA operative John Lakeman, who really just wants to be a folk singer – life, needless to say, has other plans for him. The smart plot takes in Iran, nuclear weapons, a single-minded Luxembourger cop and a lot more info about industrial piping than you’d ever need know. Patriot is one of Amazon’s best original series, which is why it’s a true shame that there are (currently) no plans for a third season.

Watch Patriot on Amazon Prime