Get the most out of your Amazon Prime subscription with these shows
With a deluge of OTT platforms to choose from, if you’re placing your bets on one, may we suggest Amazon Prime? You don’t need a reason apart from the gargantuan library of shows that it houses. In our list below, you’ll find a mind-boggling variety: some of the most gritty crime dramas to dystopian plots, from period dramedies to heartfelt family dramas.
An Amazon prime subscription is worth every buck you spend. Let’s dive into some shows the streaming platform offers to show you why.
This Is Us
If we had to hand out an award for the most shocking moments in a single show, This Is Us would be a clear winner. Starring Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz, Sterling K Brown, and others, it looks at the ups & downs in the relationships in the Pearson family. We see a doting father in Jack, a loving mother in Rebecca, a fraught sibling relationship between Kevin & Randall.
The show doesn’t uncover chronologically, which is why we are constantly finding out about new things & events that led them to the present.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Based on Margaret Atwood’s eponymous novel, The Handmaid’s Tale follows a grim dystopian plot. The USA is now Gilead, a totalitarian society where women are the property of the state. To combat a falling birth rate, the remaining fertile women are captured for sexual servitude and forced to have children of the commanders.
We get to see Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls & Elizabeth Moss of Mad Men as nameless women. As the plot progresses, more secrets are revealed. There’s an “eye” in the house, a person acting as a messenger. Elizabeth Moss’s June finds out her husband & daughter are alive. It’s worth watching to see how much they’re willing to push the dystopian boundaries. What will be the rules of the new world order?
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
When The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel released on Amazon Prime in 2017, it seemed like it’d be just another period dramedy. But the creator duo Amy-Dan Palladino (of the Gilmore Girls fame) can be trusted to enliven any era.
Both Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel & Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson are absolutely delightful. They also make one hell of a manager-talent couple. But the show isn’t just tasteful costumes. It’s a commentary on the gendered dynamics of the world, on infidelity, marriage, and other filial issues.
That isn’t even the best part. The real fun lies in the stand-up comedy routines Midge falls into by accident. To see a woman be her confident, funny self on stage is refreshing.
Undone
From the creator of BoJack Horseman comes another story where the protagonist doesn’t feel quite at home with her family. In this dramedy, we explore mental illness, death, grief, trauma, and the collective dysfunction caused by them all.
Undone follows Alma, a misfit who escapes death in an accident, only to find out that the accident might have caused some damage to her memory & mind. Amazon’s first original animated series did so well, it was also renewed for another season in November.
Fleabag
How does one even explain the charm of Fleabag? Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays a British woman with a dry & wry sense of humor, who is in the throes of loss: she’s lost her mother & her best friend in succession, but grief doesn’t fit well with her personality.
And in the second season, there’s the hot priest, played by Andrew Scott, to take our mind off other things. Yet, when all is said & done, all we’re left with is the priest’s monologue:
“Love is awful . . . It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own.”
—
Which Amazon Prime show are you going to binge-watch next? Let us know in the comments!
