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 service? 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 shows to watch on Prime Video, 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 shows on Amazon Prime below:
Last updated on April 25, 2024.
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 and co-executive produced 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: 5 seasons: 40 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 Maisel, 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. Swarm
Year: 2023
Cast: Dominique Fishback, Chloe Bailey, Billie Eilish
Genre: Thriller
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 7 episodes
Created By: Janine Nabers, Donald Glover
Trailer: Watch here
A fever dream of real-life pop culture standom that quickly turns nightmarish, this mind-bending limited original series from Janine Nabers and Donald Glover is one we won’t soon forget. Dominique Fishback commands all of the screentime here, playing a troubled young woman named Dre who is obsessed with her pop singing idol Nijah (a Beyonce stand-in if ever there was one). After a tragedy forces her to go on the run, Dre begins a journey that tests the gruesome, bloody limits of how far she’s willing to go to meet her celebrity deity.
7. Daisy Jones & The Six
Year: 2023
Cast: Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone
Genre: Drama, Music
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 10 episodes
Created By: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Trailer: Watch here
Based on a best-selling book of the same name, this musical drama — that draws some squint-and-you’ll-see-them parallels to a certain ’70s rock band — is boosted by a pair of powerful lead performances from Riley Keough and Sam Claflin. They play Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne, two gifted musicians who connect on stage to further their careers. While their music brings the band unheard-of success, their enemies-to-lovers affair threatens to destroy both of their personal lives.
8. Jack Ryan
Year: 2018
Cast: John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly
Genre: Action, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 4 seasons: 26 episodes
Created By: Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland
Trailer: Watch here
John Krasinski’s return to television in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan marks a dramatic departure from his Office days. Here, he plays famed CIA analyst Jack Ryan in the TV 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. 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.
10. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Year: 2024-
Cast: Donald Glover, Maya Erskine, Paul Dano, Michaela Cool, Ron Perlman, Wagner Moura, Parker Posey
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Spy, Action
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Francesca Sloane, Donald Glover
Trailer: Watch here
Do we really need this reimagining of the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie? Oh god yes. Watch the first few episodes, and you might agree that this effort was not wasted. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine pick up as assassins who happen to be paired together (and “married”), and you aren’t ready for the rollicking, madcap, action-packed set of missions that they must complete (or else?). Glover is incredible as always, but Erskine steps up to take control of the screen, and boy, their onscreen relationship is as much of an occupational risk as the assignments themselves.
11. Dead Ringers
Year: 2023
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Poppy Liu, Jennifer Ehle
Genre: Horror, Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 6 episodes
Created By: Alice Birch
Trailer: Watch here
There’s a glut of good TV at the moment so even a modern remake of a bit of classic David Cronenberg-ian body horror needs some buzzwords to cut through the noise. Luckily, Dead Ringers has that. And we’ll list them out for you now: Rachel Weisz. Evil twins. Surrealist sci-fi. Fertility clinic. Power struggles. A shocking finale. And Rachel Weisz (again). Helmed by Alice Birch (Normal People) with a few episodes directed by horror maestro Karyn Kusama, this show takes Cronenberg’s central idea and gender-flips it, giving us twin obstetricians Beverly and Elliot Mantle whose day job sees them playing god at a cutting-edge fertility clinic. But, when their toxic relationship dynamics are threatened by both their professional success and personal entanglements, their bond reaches disturbing new depths.
12. Good Omens
Year: 2019
Cast: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Jon Hamm
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 2 season: 12 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 the past 6,000 years 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. In season one, the two must band together to prevent the Anti-Christ — a kid in Oxford shire — from rising to power, destroying the world, and, most importantly, Crowley’s best of Queen mixtape. In the series’ latest season, the duo is thrown into the center of a mystery involving a missing angel and a rebellion at the gates of hell.
13. 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.
14. 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 in Los Angeles and conspiracies to solving his own mother’s murder — that much more interesting.
15. I’m A Virgo
Year: 2023
Cast: Jharrel Jarome, Olivia Washington, Brett Gray
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 season: 7 episodes
Created By: Boots Riley
Trailer: Watch here
Boots Riley gives us another surreal, absurdist comedy that leans into fantasy and satire to deliver a meaningful message — this time about the joys and perils of growing up. Jharrel Jarome plays Cootie, a 13-foot-tall man living in Oakland who breaks free of his sheltered upbringing in order to experience the world for the first time. He makes friends, finds love, and even joins in a revolution of sorts, all while figuring out how to exist in a place that constantly demands he make himself smaller.
16. The Consultant
Year: 2023
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Nat Wolff, Brittany O’Grady
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-16
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Tony Basgallop
Trailer: Watch here
Christoph Waltz fronts this dark and twisted take on office life that leans heavily in Apple TV+’s Severance vibes but takes the horror up a notch. Waltz plays the micro-managing boss of a company with a handful of millennial/Gen-Z-age workers who begin to question his militaristic and menacing methods. To reveal any more would be to spoil the best thing about this show: the chance to watch Waltz play a villainous psycho, an archetype he’s pretty much perfected at this point.
17. Outer Range
Year: 2022-present
Cast: Josh Brolin, Imogen Poots, Lili Taylor, Tom Pelphrey, Tamara Podemski, Lewis Pullman, Will Patton, and Kristen Connolly
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Neo Western, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Brian Watkins
Trailer: Watch here
Royal Abbott has a lot on his plate. His daughter-in-law has gone missing, a drifter has shown up on his land, they’ve got a feud brewing with a rival family trying to take his ranch, and there’s a super weird black void just hanging out in his pasture. In case you were wondering, the black void is where the sci-fi comes in. This is a lovely, strange gem of a show, and Brolin is the perfect pater familias to give it an air of western legitimacy alongside all the universe-bending existential squirreliness. He is a Man In Black after all — in both meanings of the phrase. Somehow, a show that’s like The X-Files and Yellowstone made a foal together works brilliantly.
18. Kids in the Hall
Year: 2022
Cast: David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald
Trailer: Watch here
Amazon greenlit a revival season of this Canadian sketch comedy series in 2022, skewing a bit from the show’s original format to introduce its quirky brand of comedy to new audiences. Gone were the live tapings and laugh tracks. In their place, new characters joined the O.G. crew of David Foley, Bruce McCulloch, and Kevin McDonald to give us skits about post-apocalyptic disc jockeys and Shakespearean busts come to life, and old gay queens named Buddy.
19. The Summer I Turned Pretty
Year: 2022
Cast: Lola Tung, Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno
Genre: Romance, Drama
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 2 seasons: 15 episodes
Created By: Jenny Han
Trailer: Watch here
Our summer rom-com needs are being more than met with this teen drama about a young girl who falls in love with two brothers over the course of one summer. Lola Tung plays Isabel “Belly” Conklin, who summers each year at Cousins Beach with her family and their close friends — including two brothers, Jeremiah and Conrad. When Belly catches both of their interests, the trio is forced to navigate hurt feelings and secret confessions, all while fighting to save their summer hideaway and grieve a terrible loss.
20. 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.
21. Harlem
Year: 2021
Cast: Meagan Good, Grace Byers, Jerrie Johnson
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 2 seasons: 18 episodes
Created By: Tracy Oliver
Trailer: Watch here
Tracy Oliver is the comedic mind that gave us Girl’s Trip so obviously, this dramedy about a group of Black women pursuing individual success while nurturing their friendships in the Big Apple is going to be good. It’s a bit Girls, a bit Sex and the City, but wholly authentic and real in a way that few shows featuring Black female friendships are.
22. The Horrors of Dolores Roach
Year: 2023
Cast: Justina Machado, Alejandro Hernandez
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Rating: 18+
Runtime: 1 season: 8 episodes
Created By: Aaron Mark, Dara Resnik
Trailer: Watch here
Justina Machado is delightfully unhinged in this horror comedy about a former inmate who goes on a killing spree in her recently gentrified neighborhood. After serving 16 years for a minor crime, Dolores (Machado) is released from jail and returns to find her Washington Heights neighborhood severely changed. An old friend named Luis (Hernandez) offers her a place to live below his empanada shop but things sour quickly when money dries up and Dolores is confronted by old foes. Human empanadas, deadly massages, and meta, biographical Broadway plays soon follow.
23. The Mindy Project
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
Mindy Kaling proved she could pen a funny TV show with her tenure on NBC’s The Office but her signature brand of comedy shines even more in this workplace ensemble that sees her playing an obstetrician struggling to balance her personal and professional life. She’s surrounded by a cast that includes quirky characters played by some top-tier talent — think Ike Barinholtz, Chris Messina, Ed Weeks, and Adam Pally — but it’s Kaling’s heroine you come to care and root for by the end.
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.