Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service doesn’t always get the same level of attention from critics and consumers that its rivals like Netflix and HBO Max enjoy, and I’d argue that’s partly by design. Most people, for example, probably don’t even consider themselves “subscribed” to Prime Video at all, in the sense that it’s largely an add-on benefit to an Amazon Prime subscription, which you can pay for once a year. Furthermore, the streamer’s offering is nowhere near as robust or consistent as that of an alternative like Netflix.
Amazon has also recently turned the entirety of Prime Video into an ad-supported tier, one that requires everyone to pay extra if they don’t want to see any ads.
Having said that, don’t make the mistake of assuming that Prime Video is some kind of also-ran in the Streaming Wars or that it lacks sufficient content to enjoy. Shows like Reacher and The Boys underscore that Prime Video is absolutely a home for great TV. In the list below, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the other fantastic titles it has available — by highlighting several underrated series and hidden gems (both movies and TV shows) that belong on your watchlist.
Hidden gem TV shows and movies on Prime Video
From gripping crime sagas to international dramas and reality series, there’s so much great content to enjoy on Prime Video that I’d argue is criminally overlooked. Here are some of those hidden gems, in no particular order — including both old and new titles.
Mozart in the Jungle
Inspired by Blair Tindall’s memoir about the high art and low paying life of a jobbing oboe player in New York’s classical music scene, this Prime Video gem is as vibrant and beguiling as a Mozart concerto.
The show follows Gael García Bernal, as he takes on the role of the New York Symphony’s enigmatic yet brilliant conductor. What elevates the series is the fact that it doesn’t focus exclusively on the conductor; we also get an inside look at what life is like for an orchestra and for its colorful cast of characters through the eyes of Lola Kirke’s oboist Hailey Rutledge. She brings bright-eyed optimism and charm to the cutthroat world of classical music, and to the opposing imperatives to make great art while also ensuring that the orchestra functions as a money-making venture amid a diminishment of interest in old music.
Red Oaks
In the summer of 1985, David Meyers takes a job as a tennis pro at the Red Oaks Country Club in suburban New Jersey. Pulled in different directions by his parents, girlfriend, and co-workers, the 20-year-old man is trying to figure out what his version of the future ought to look like in this sweet, coming-of-age narrative that blends 1980s nostalgia with a colorful cast of characters and a throwback, feel-good soundtrack. A pleasant binge from start to finish.
The English
Next up is a Prime Video Western starring Emily Blunt that hooked me from the trailer alone.
In The English, Blunt plays an aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Cornelia Locke, and she’s out for revenge after the death of her child. Underneath her veneer of nobility, there’s a woman who’s seething with rage and who intends to take a life. “Someone killed my child,” she later says, her tear-stained face the only hint of emotion as she whispers the threat. “And now I’m gonna kill them.”
She addresses a taciturn Pawnee ex-cavalry scout. “Will you help me?”
“Can you shoot?”
“If I have to.”
“Oh … you’ll have to.”
The Englishwoman and the scout come together against the backdrop of the 1890s American frontier, setting out on what amounts to a long chase across a violent landscape built on dreams and lawlessness.
Jinny’s Kitchen
Meanwhile, this next Prime Video title is for anyone who needs a comfort watch right now.
Massively popular South Korean actor Park Seo-joon and his friend Kim Tae-hyung (aka V) of BTS are each fabulously wealthy global superstars, with millions of adoring fans — as well as paparazzi and a universe of blogs that track and attempt to capture their every move. In their reality series Jinny’s Kitchen, however, there’s not a trace of any of that to be found. This hidden gem is a serene, wanderlust-inducing series set in Bacalar, which is a gorgeous locale in Mexico near the Mexico-Belize border.
The basic premise: The “Jinny” in the title refers to Lee Seo-jin, an actor who’s nominally put in charge of running a Korean street food restaurant in Bacalar. Working for him are Korean celebrities, including V and Park Seo-joon (who recently made his Hollywood debut in The Marvels). This was one of the most Zen-inducing streaming shows I’ve watched in quite a long time, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
ZeroZeroZero
This next series couldn’t be more different and is the complete opposite of Zen.
If, like me, you’re a fan of HBO’s mafia drama Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero is an absolute must-watch — especially since, as with Gomorrah, it’s based on a book by investigative journalist and writer Roberto Saviano. Prime Video’s sprawling crime drama unfolds across six countries and three continents, following the journey of a single cocaine shipment from the moment an Italian cartel decides to buy it until the cargo is paid for and delivered.
This series is extremely violent, with brutal gunfights and plenty of civilians who die amid the bloodshed. But if sprawling crime narratives are your thing, they don’t get more satisfyingly immense than this chronology of a drug sale and all the lives that it touches.
The Devil’s Hour
The Devil’s Hour is a trippy, mind-bending thriller with a near-perfect critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it stars Jessica Raine as Lucy — a woman woken every night at 3:33 a.m. by terrifying visions during what’s known as “the devil’s hour.”
She’s the mother to an emotionless 8-year-old son, and her own mother speaks to empty chairs.
“When Lucy’s name is inexplicably connected to a string of brutal murders in the area,” Prime Video’s summary for the series explains, “the answers that have evaded her all these years will finally come into focus. Peter Capaldi plays a reclusive nomad, driven by a murderous obsession. He becomes the prime target of a police manhunt led by compassionate detective Ravi Dhillon, played by Nikesh Patel.”
Paper Girls
Based on the best-selling graphic novels by Brian K. Vaughan, this next series sort of feels like Prime Video’s attempt at a Stranger Things. From the official synopsis:
“In the early morning hours after Halloween 1988, four paper girls — Erin, Mac, Tiffany, and KJ — are out on their delivery route when they become caught in the crossfire between warring time-travelers, changing the course of their lives forever.
“Transported into the future, these girls must figure out a way to get back home to the past, a journey that will bring them face-to-face with the grown-up versions of themselves. While reconciling that their futures are far different than their 12-year-old selves imagined, they are being hunted by a militant faction of time-travelers known as the Old Watch, who have outlawed time travel so that they can stay in power. In order to survive, the girls will need to overcome their differences and learn to trust each other, and themselves.”
Outer Range
The simplest way to describe this next Prime Video series is Yellowstone-meets-the-supernatural.
From the show’s official description: “At the onset of the series, the Abbotts are coping with the disappearance of daughter-in-law Rebecca. They are pushed further to the brink when the Tillersons (the gaudy owners of the neighboring profit-driven ranch) make a play for their land.
“An untimely death in the community sets off a chain of tension-filled events, and seemingly small-town, soil-bound troubles come to a head with the arrival of a mysterious black void in the Abbotts’ west pasture. Wild revelations unfold as Royal fights to protect his family; through his eyes, we begin to see how time contains secrets held in the past and unsettling mysteries foreshadowed.”
Night Sky
Night Sky is an eight-episode Prime Video gem that stars Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons as Irene and Franklin York — a retired couple who maintain a fascinating secret.
Buried in their backyard is a portal to another planet. Obviously, the show is about more than that, but I honestly could have watched an entire series built solely around the way this couple, in the twilight of their lives, slowly shuffle out to their backyard and steal away to that other planet through the portal, as if they were nothing more than an old couple settling into a rocking chair on their porch.
Million Miles Away
This Prime Video release from 2023 is an inspirational and supremely feel-good movie based on the book Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut by José Hernández.
A Million Miles Away, starring Michael Pena, is about dreamers and was inspired by the real-life story of a NASA flight engineer named Jose Hernandez. The story follows Jose and his close-knit family of migrant farm workers on a journey of more than a decade, one that took him from a rural village in Mexico to the fields of San Joaquin Valley and, ultimately, more than 200 miles above the Earth to the International Space Station.
The movie is a rousing emotional powerhouse, built around the community of support from Jose’s hard-working parents, relatives, and teachers who helped him achieve an audacious goal (“Who better to leave this planet, and dive into the unknown, than a migrant farm worker?”).
Samaritan
Critics hated Prime Video’s Samaritan, but audiences overwhelmingly loved it — and I’m definitely in the latter category. Starring Sylvester Stallone as the reclusive “Mr. Smith,” this feel-good action drama involves a 13-year-old boy named Sam who suspects that his mysterious neighbor Mr. Smith is actually a legendary superhero — the very one, in fact, who 25 years ago was a vigilante going by the name Samaritan and who supposedly died after a fiery battle with his arch-rival named Nemesis.
The city today is teetering on the brink of chaos, crime is on the rise, and Sam takes it upon himself to convince his neighbor to come out of hiding and save the city before it’s too late.
Good Night Oppy
This documentary tells the story of the “Oppy” rover of NASA’s Opportunity mission, which used a solar-powered robotic rover to explore Mars for almost 15 years. Initially designed to last only three months, the rover ended up crawling its way across the Red Planet and enduring the harsh elements for more than a decade, ultimately making us all weep with the final messages that it sent back to earth in 2018 — messages that basically amounted to, “My battery is low, and it’s getting dark.”
NASA’s ambitious rover, which captivated so many of us with its 3D images of Mars’ rocky surface, was part of a mission that predated the launch of the iPhone by a few years. Oppy broke down for good in a spot on Mars’ surface that seems, in hindsight, especially fitting for this resilient piece of machinery: Perseverance Valley.
