The Best New Shows to Stream on Amazon Prime This Week

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Original series Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the stand-out TV series premiere on Prime this week, but if it that's not to your taste, there are many, many other worthwhile shows out there, whether you're looking for something life-changing or something time wasting.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

This Prime original series shares a title with the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but it strays far from the source material. In this version of the story, the Smiths (Pen15's Maya Erskine and Atlanta’s Donald Glover) are a couple of intelligence agents who get married for real to make their undercover identities bulletproof. But feelings develop between the two opposites; complicated feelings. Each episode details a dangerous case the couple work as well as charting their equally dangerous marriage.

Good Omens (2019)

Amazon teamed up with the BBC to make this TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 1990 novel in which a demon and an angel are forced to work together to prevent the end of the world. The six-episode first season proved so charming they adapted some Gaiman/Pratchett ideas for a second season, in which the odd couple search for the Angel Gabriel. Season 2 is a bit of a fall-off, but the chemistry between leads Michael Sheen and David Tennant still carry the show.

Dead Ringers (2023)

In Dead Ringers, Rachel Weisz plays identical twin gynecologists Elliot and Beverly Mantle. (Is that not enough for you to watch it?) This TV update of a David Cronenberg 1988 cult, body-horror classic updates the source material by swapping the main characters' genders and centering the story on birth instead of cosmetic surgery, but Croneberg's studied, cool presentation of queasy material permeate this nothing-quite-like-it show.

Jury Duty (2023)

Jury Duty is such a funny show, it managed to attract attention and gain an audience from the TV Siberia of FreeVee. Prime's sister streaming service took a chance on a reality show with an unusual premise: an unsuspecting guy thinks he serving on a jury, but everything around him is a put-on. The judge, the other jurors, the case, etc., are all fake. This could have been disastrous; it's full of hilarious moments that make you ask "how could he not know this is a joke?" but it holds together thanks to the otherworldly improv talent of its cast. Among the many highlights, actor James Marsden, playing an asshole version of himself, growing increasingly insufferable and ridiculous as the trial goes on.

Flack (2019)

In Flack, Anna Paquin stars as Robyn, a public relations professional. She's the fixer that rich and famous people call when they've been caught doing something unspeakable. Her job is to minimize, misdirect, and mislead, and hopefully salvage the careers and good names of her clients. Each episode of Flack features a different, trashy scandal to enjoy, so if you're into glamorous people behaving like scallywags, you'll love Flack.

Last week's picks

Expats

Nicole Kidman is the driving force behind this drama about a group of rich American expatriates in Hong Kong. Expats is a heavy, only-for-adults drama about loss, grief, class, and alienation as architect-turned-housewife Margaret (played by Kidman) tries to cope with the disappearance of her son while her expat friend deals with her own failing marriage. In the background is the uncomfortable fact that the troubled rich people's servants are expats of a different kind.

Hazbin Hotel 

Series creator Vivienne "VivziePop" Medrano financed the pilot for Hazbin Hotel largely through her Patreon followers, earning enough buzz to get a series on Prime. The not-for-little-kids cartoon series tells the story of the Princess of Hell, Charlie Morningstar, who builds the Hazbin Hotel to rehabilitate demons so they can go to heaven. Bright, colorful, and packed with memorable songs, Hazbin Hotel crackles with youthful energy and will appeal to every theater kid, goth, weirdo, and creative—my people!

Zorro

Zorro (the character) has been around since 1919, and the masked swordsman’s derring-do is still inspiring adaptations. This one finds Zorro in Los Angeles in the 1800s, dishing out justice to scoundrels of all types at the point of his shiny rapier. If classic cinematic heroics and good vs. evil storytelling turn your crank, check out Zorro.

The Tick (2016)

There have been three television adaptations of cult superhero-parody comic book The Tick. There was The Tick, a cartoon in the mid 1990s; The Tick, a Fox sitcom that aired for nine episodes in 2001; and The Tick, an Amazon original series from 2016. Created by and starring under-appreciated British comic genius Peter Serafinowicz, Amazon's The Tick manages to do something the other TV versions couldn't: It goes beyond weirdo superhero-satire and builds a plausible world that a big, blue, impossibly stupid superhero could live in. It's outlandish comedy, but it takes the genre and characters seriously enough to tell a compelling story.

I’m a Virgo (2023)

Boots Riley has been creating vital, confrontational Art since his criminally under-appreciated hip-hop crew The Coup dropped its first EP in 1991. Riley earned universal critical acclaim for the pointed social commentary and surrealism of his feature film debut, 2018’s Sorry to Bother You, and followed it in 2023 with I’m a Virgo, a strange, thoughtful, and politically uncompromising coming-of-age story. Cootie is a black teenager who is 13 feet tall. Hidden away by his well-meaning parents since birth, Cootie has grown too big to stay safe and protected, and his adventurers in the world capture the beauty and heartbreak of first friendship, first love, and first realization that the world is much different than they told you it would be.