September 18th, 2017 | Updated on April 8th, 2023
Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service has come a long way since it first started offering free movies and TV shows to Prime members just over six years ago. Amazon now has something to offer nearly every viewer, whether you enjoy psychedelic thrillers or offbeat comedies.
If you’re trying to figure out what to watch next, here’s a great place to start with a look at 50 of the best TV Shows on Amazon Prime Instant Video right now.
1. One Mississippi
Double mastectomy. Your mother dying. A life threatening infection. Not exactly hilarious stuff. But comedian Tig Notaro’s deeply personal series about returning home after her mother’s death will make you cry and laugh at the utter absurdity of life. Particularly impressive is Notaro’s performance. She’s not an actress by trade which brings a raw believability to her character. Watch Here
2. Preacher
It was always going to be a tough ask, adapting Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s iconic comic book series into a TV show, but the makers of Preacher have made an impressive job of it, at least as far as the first season goes. As we write this, the first episode of the second season has just landed, with another being added each Monday. Watch Here
3. The Night Manager
John le Carre stories are usually morose or opaque as spies are seen either trapped in dark and cold worlds or dealing with the monotony that makes up most of their days. But not The Night Manager. In this miniseries, we have bona fide movie star Tom Hiddleston looking dashing in linen suits—or sometimes nothing at all—as he goes undercover in the world of yachts and fresh lobster salads to take down Hugh Laurie’s Dickie Roper, the worst man in the world—the type of person who learns of a sarin gas attack and thinks “business opportunity. Watch Here
4. Amores Perros
Before director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu became a heavy hitter in Hollywood (he’s the man responsible for The Revenant and Birdman) he made his first feature film Amores Perros in his native Mexico – and it was very much a sign of things to come. Watch Here
5. Mr. Robot
Despite the structural problems plaguing the series’ frustrating second season, Mr. Robot’s Elliot Alderson (Emmy winner Rami Malek) remains one of the most seductive characters on television. To set an hour-long drama more or less inside its own protagonist’s head is a bold gambit, and Elliot, his philosophical narration roiling beneath his placid surface, is a convincing guide through creator Sam Esmail’s tumult of hallucinations, memories, delusions and dreams. Watch Here
6. Amy
If you thought Asif Kapadia’s Senna was a biographical documentary that could bring on the tears, you ain’t seen nothing yet. His followup is a close-up look at the life and death of Amy Winehouse, the most gifted jazz singer of her generation, a tabloid target and a truly tragic figure. Watch Here
7. The Expanse
In Syfy’s The Expanse, Mars and Earth are two superpowers racing to gain the technological upper hand, while those who live in the Asteroid Belt mine resources for the more privileged planets and become more and more prone to radicalization. Watch Here
8. The X-Files
The new series of The X-Files, which the producers sadly declined to call The Older Mulder Folders, has now arrived on Prime – so you can now watch every single episode of this beloved paranormal investigation drama. Watch Here
9. Mr. Show With Bob And David
Before alternative comedy was a recognized thing, there was Mr. Show with Bob and David, a genius sketch comedy show that had a criminally short run on HBO from 1995 to 1998. Each episode was loosely based around a central theme and laboriously structured, with sketches leading directly into each other, and sometimes even wrapping around each other like Russian nesting dolls of comedy. Watch Here
10. Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Put those interminable Hobbit movies to one side for a moment and remember that there was a time when Peter Jackson’s bloated, big budget Tolkien adaptations were actually enjoyable. And this extended version of the first Lord of the Rings movie. Watch Here
11. Boardwalk Empire
Easily dismissed as just a Sopranos clone set in the 1920s, Boardwalk Empire wisely took many of the best elements of its predecessor and expanded its scope. It’s this wide-ranging spotlight, drifting from the highest levels of political office down to lowly bootleggers and prostitutes, that makes the show something special, offering up morality plays that hold the lives of millions at stake while putting an actual face on those being affected. Watch Here
12. No Country For Old Men
No Country for Old Men always felt like the most screen-adaptable of Cormac McCarthy’s novels, and with the Coen brothers at the helm it would have taken some kind of disaster to stop this movie from becoming an instant classic. Watch Here
13. Red Oaks
Red Oaks arrived with a hell of a pedigree. It’s produced by Steven Soderbergh and David Gordon Green, Green directed the pilot, and it’s created and written by long-time Soderbergh associates Joe Gangemi and Gregory Jacobs. (Jacobs also directed Magic Mike XXL.) Other episodes are directed by people like Amy Heckerling and Hal Hartley. Watch Here
14. The Man In The High Castle
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!. Watch Here
15. Sneaky Pete
In Sneaky Pete, Giovanni Ribisi plays Marius, a conman who, in a moment of tragicomic brilliance, fakes a bank robbery (albeit with a real gun and by scaring the bank customers) in order to avoid being killed by his pursuers. When he’s released from prison three years later, after listening to his cellmate Pete’s non-stop stories of his long-lost family, Marius assumes Pete’s identity. Watch Here
16. Animal Kingdom
If you thought Australian cinema began and ended with Crocodile Dundee, brace yourself for two hours with the Cody family – Melbourne’s answer to the Corleones. The Codys’ crime of choice is armed robbery (with a spot of drug dealing and murder on the side) but things become complicated when a young relative, 17-year-old J, comes to the stay after his mother dies of a heroin overdose. Watch Here
17. Glee
Ryan Murphy isn’t exactly known for creating reality based shows. So no you didn’t go to a high school where the glee club could put together multiple Broadway level productions complete with costumes, special effects and elaborate sets each week. But Murphy understood teens. Watch Here
18. The Americans
1980s nostalgia-fests in film and TV often neglect to mention one thing: the Cold War was still well underway, meaning hundreds of millions of innocents all over the world were mere minutes away from potential nuclear annihilation. Watch Here
19. Frasier
Frasier is arguably the best spin-off in television history. Kelsey Grammer played the character for 20 years, and made Dr. Crane the longest-running live-action character on TV. Grammer won four Lead Actor Emmy awards for his portrayal. In total, the series won 37 Emmy Awards during its run. Though it was about a psychiatrist, the heart of Frasier was Dr. Crane’s relationships with his father and brother. Watch Here
20. The Hateful Eight
Take the stand-off at the end of Reservoir Dogs, write an epic backstory that takes in the American Civil War, bounty hunters and Abe Lincoln, and you’ve got this, the peak of Tarantino’s penchant for Westerns – a film that unfolds almost entirely inside a snowbound haberdashery. Watch Here
21. Orphan Black
Having one actor play several characters in a single show is nothing new. But that doesn’t take away from what Tatiana Maslany accomplished in the first season of BBC America’s Orphan Black. Maslany plays a host of clones on a sci-fi show that’s not just for sci-fi fans. Her main character, Sarah Manning, is a young British mother living in Canada. Watch Here
22. American Gods
Here it is: the new mega-budget drama from Bryan Fuller. Based on the beloved Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods (exclusive to Amazon Prime currently, and available in 4K Ultra HD) weaves together cords of ancient mythology, modern mythology, Americana and pop culture to create a modern fantasy tale – a tale about immigration, above other things. Watch Here
23. Mozart In The Jungle
Based on the salacious memoir by noted oboist Blair Tindall about the down-and-dirty world of the New York classical music scene, Mozart in the Jungle plays like a rock-and-roll tell-all where the players are equipped with violins and woodwinds instead of guitars and drums. Acting as Tindall’s stand-in is Hailey Rutledge (Lola Kirke) an ambitious, if reserved oboist who finds herself thrust into the high-stakes, cutthroat world of a major New York symphony orchestra in the months before its season-opening performance. Watch Here
24. The Walking Dead
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, you owe it to yourself to do so now. Watch Here
25. American Horror Story
Even fervent fans of Ryan Murphy’s high-camp horror anthology American Horror Story would have a tough time defending its Freak Show, Hotel and Roanoke seasons. But the first three story arcs—Murder House, Asylum and Coven—pushed the bounds of scary storytelling on television and helped kick off a small-screen horror renaissance when AHS first debuted around Halloween 2011. Watch Here
26. There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson’s modern American epic is stark and relentless; the first we see of protagonist Daniel Plainview is a 20-minute sequence in which Daniel Day-Lewis scrabbles wordlessly in the dirt for silver. Watch Here
27. Patriot
What if 007 dealt with his PTSD and the moral ambiguities of being a spy by revealing his deepest inner turmoil (and state secrets) at open-mic nights in Amsterdam? What if Q had trouble requisitioning his apartment with a single chair? And M sent him to work at a piping firm in the Midwest with an extra digit in his social security number? Watch Here
28. The Fall
If you missed this Belfast-set drama when it was originally broadcast by the BBC, Amazon is here to help you rectify your mistake. A tense show centring on two compelling characters – Gillian Anderson’s icy, complex detective and Jamie Dornan’s obsessive serial killer – The Fall is equal parts police procedural and psychological thriller. Watch Here
29. Sons Of Anarchy
Take the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype, replace the hooker with a rough-around-the-edges bike club set in the ironically named town of Charming, Calif., add a conscience and things always going wrong, and you have the basic setup for Sons of Anarchy. Kurt Sutter’s gang of motorcycle-riding brothers and their lovingly nicknamed “old ladies” constantly find themselves in hot water trying to do the right thing while bending the rules just a little… which turns into bending the rules a lot. Watch Here
30. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Sometimes sci-fi is all about spaceships and explosions and men in silly costumes waving giant glow-sticks at each other; sometimes it’s about a vision of the near future, or even a parallel present, that’s close enough to our reality to properly sting. Watch Here
31. Oz
Certainly a “water cooler show” if there ever was one, Oz made waves with its violence and sexual content early on and its equally deep and disturbing storytelling once people got over the fact that it was set in a maximum security prison. Watch Here
32. The Hurt Locker
Uncomfortably tense scenes where death is but a wire snip away make for some seriously breath-holding moments, while the underlying physiological toll of war seeps into the performances of the entire cast. Arguably one of the grittiest and best modern war movies since Black Hawk Down. Watch Here
33. Eastbound & Down
I feel like a lot of people dismiss Eastbound & Down as vulgar shock comedy, a TV version of the fratty comedies that proliferated over a decade ago after the success of the Farrelly brothers and American Pie. Jody Hill and Danny McBride’s vision is far deeper and pointed than that, though, parodying not just sports or Southern culture but the type of unhealthy masculinity that underpins so much of American culture. Watch Here
34. Transparent
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. Watch Here
35. Treme
When the show tried to tell big stories to address big problems, it could occasionally drag. But when it chose to focus intently on the ordinary events of life, the parades and shows and meals and everything else that we fill our time with, there was a wonderful glorification of the city’s people. Characters didn’t need to be doing anything particularly vital, like solving crimes or stirring up trouble, to be important. Watch Here
36. Arrival
A “first contact” movie in which the extraterrestrials don’t shoot first and ask questions later, Arrival is cut from the same high quality cloth as Extraterrestrial or Contact – lofty, intelligent, character-driven sci-fi full of grand concepts, “aha!” moment twists and big emotional payoffs. Independence Day this ain’t – and it’s all the better for it. Watch Here
37. 24
It can be hard to recommend 24, the style and spirit of which, with its split screens and ticking clocks, suggest nostalgia for a moment in which the ends were seen—on TV as in government—to justify the means. Of course, this destructive moral calculus was no more convincing in November 2001, when 24 debuted, than it is now: Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow’s counterterrorism thriller may seem outdated, but prescient critics recognized from the start that its treatment of torture, among other topics, reflected a discomfiting willingness to sacrifice our values at the altar of expedience. Watch Here
38. Vikings
It follows the adventures of legendary raider Ragnar Lothbrok, who starts out as a mere farmer – albeit one who claims to be a descendant of the Norse god Odin. He rises to become a respected Earl of his settlement Kattegat, whilst enforcing his reputation as a fierce warrior. With plenty of action, deceit, atrocious hairstyles, scenery-chewing performances and almost educational story lines, Vikings is a must watch. Watch Here
39. Girls
I believe Lena Dunham is one of the foremost badasses of our artistic culture, and as far as that goes, I’m already very much on the record. The one thing I really love about Girls is that it refuses to conform to identity politics. There are times when Dunham can be a wonderful spokesperson for female power, and there are times when she pisses off the feminists. Watch Here
40. Looper
Looper is a superb, mind-bending, futuristic, time-travelling action-thriller that sees Joseph Gordon-Levitt assume the role of an assassin whose job consists of putting a bullet in the head of people teleported to his time by a future mob organisation. Watch Here
41. Justified
Award-worthy guest stars were the rule not the exception on this show. Combine that with the best ensemble on television, firecracker writing from show-runner Graham Yost with a dependable stable of wordsmiths, and the feature-film quality direction and cinematography from Francis Kenny, Michael Dinner and others, and what do you get? An instant classic that improbably translates Elmore Leonard’s twisted humor, Western deconstruction and damaged psyches into hour-long gems episode after episode. Watch Here
42. Inherent Vice
Joaquin Phoenix plays Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello – a beach-dwelling, pot-smoking private investigator with the hair of Wolverine and wardrobe of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. When two people come to him for help – one an old flame, the other an ex-con – and mention the same name, he finds himself in the middle of a what is essentially an old-fashioned story of disappearances and deceit involving the FBI and mysterious organised crime. Watch Here
43. Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey is never short on drama and general strife. The ensemble series is extraordinarily well-acted (as evidenced by Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt, Jim Carter and Brendan Coyle all receiving Emmy nominations), and there’s perhaps no easier way to describe the second season’s plot twists than fucking nuts, a term we strongly feel the saucy Dowager Countess would approve of. Amnesia? Yup. Watch Here
44. Sneaky Pete
In truth, this Amazon Original stands well enough on its own merits, having little in common with Cranston’s other show aside from a plethora of tense situations from which our hero – a likeable conman played by Giovanni Ribisi – must extract himself through a combination of luck and skill. Well, that’s going to happen when you show up on a family’s doorstep falsely claiming to be their long-lost grandson. Watch Here
45. Star Trek: The Next Generation
The original series was pioneering. Deep Space Nine and Voyager had their moments. But TNG was head-and-shoulders the greatest Star Trek franchise. Jean Luc Picard. Data. Worf. The holodeck. The Borg. Watch Here
46. Four Lions
Very dark and very funny, Chris Morris’s farcical account of a group of British Muslims plotting a terrorist attack caused a series of cautious broadcasters to have nightmares with its controversial subject matter. In other hands it could have been a travesty, but Morris has a special talent for placing the unthinkable on screen and making it funny and heartfelt, in a weird sort of way. Watch Here
47. Flight Of The Conchords
When I hear the words “musical comedy,” I tend to think of old Broadway standards like My Fair Lady or Singin’ in the Rain. No offense to those shows, but I’m very glad that Flight of the Conchords was a musical comedy of a very different kind. Starring Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, the show is the story of an awful two-man band from New Zealand who have an incompetent manager and literally one fan as they try to make it big in New York. Watch Here
48. Parks And Recreation
The show that propelled Amy Poehler to Golden Globe-presenting notoriety and Chris Pratt to blockbuster ultra-stardom has its wit and one-liners honed to perfection. Taking Modern Family’s warmth, mixing it with Arrested Development’s absurdity and building it around The Office’s mockumentary formula, it centres on the inconsequential workdays of the least consequential department of the council of madeup middle- American town of Pawnee, Indiana. Watch Here
49. Doctor Who
Originally launched in 1963, The Doctor returned to the TV screen in 2005, traveling through time and space in the TARDIS, an antiquated and surprisingly spacious blue police box. The special effects may have gotten marginally better, but the camp has stayed the same. With Russell T. Davies at the helm and David Tennant playing the 10th doctor, the show was never better. Watch Here
50. Bosch
Exclusive to Amazon Prime’s and based on Michael Connelly’s crime novels, this show stars Titus Welliver as the eponymous Los Angeles detective. Bosch, it has to be said, is something of a clichéd telly cop, but thanks to a twisty, turny plot, Welliver’s charismatic performance and a fine supporting cast, it’s perfect binge-watch material, with three seasons now on Amazon and a fourth in the works. Watch Here
