The 25 Best Amazon Original Series, Ranked

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Amazon Prime has taken a winding path regarding its original series. Initially, it had the rather revolutionary idea of combining a traditional pilot season with viewer voting to determine which shows would move forward. But almost from the start, Amazon kind of just greenlit what it wanted to, including shows that never had a pilot as part of its system. Eventually, it abandoned that conceit and followed in the footsteps of Netflix and others by honing in on off-beat original programming—mostly comedies—and “rescuing” series cut by other networks. The result has been a hodgepodge of quality, and far fewer series than its streaming competitors. At its best, Amazon’s original series are quirky critical darlings, although few have managed to truly break out. Still, the great ones are truly great.

Below, the Paste staff have voted on the best Amazon original series, terminology we’re playing a little fast and loose with in terms of whether or not Amazon was a partner in the production or just an exclusive distributor. Nevertheless, given the small (but growing) amount of originals on the platform, this felt like an OK compromise to make.

We’ll be updating the list in future months to potentially include new releases or series we’re catching up with. For a ranking of the best shows on Amazon right now—originals or otherwise—check out our mega list, starting with the top pick.

Honorable Mention: The Tick, Forever, Transparent, Jean-Claude Van Johnson

25. Tales from the Loop

Created by: Nathaniel Halpern
Stars: Rebecca Hall, Paul Schneider, Duncan Joiner, Daniel Zolghadri, Jonathan Pryce

Watch on Amazon Prime

A small town can become so self-contained and isolated, so self-involved in its own goings-on, that it can feel like a reality all its own. In Mercer, Ohio, the Midwestern setting of Amazon’s Tales from the Loop series, that feeling is magnified by a synecdoche of strangeness: The Loop, a device that’s fantastical physical function is left as vague as the intentions of its creator Russ (Jonathan Pryce). The thrumming black sphere at its center, locked beneath a concrete facility filled with scientists and mathematicians, makes the impossible possible. Life, otherwise, goes on. With limited explanation and an excess of empathy, the stark and lovely vignettes are a touching blend of intimacy and otherworldliness, like diary entries sent from an alternate dimension.

Creator Nathaniel Halpern adapts Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s sci-fi source of the same name, which blends alt-history anthropology and techno-archeology, into this reimagined and loosely linked anthology. Americanized to Ohio, the stories of Mercer play out like the Voyager’s Golden Records—teaching viewers from another world how the basic elements of life work in this realm. Memory, loss, regret, loneliness, even unrepentant horniness—Tales from the Loop skews less Black Mirror than it does the best episodes of Twilight Zone, where the genre setting merely kickstarts a more evocative piece of naturalist drama. Sometimes the sci-fi elements add layers and depth, but they often just support and color the humanity Halpern writes into the stories.

Ultimately, however, Tales from the Loop is that rare sci-fi show: one that trusts us to breathe in deep the oddities of its world, accept that we aren’t going to know everything, and climb aboard anyways. That trust, built with its tactful scene-setting and human-sized troubles, allows for easy investment in deceivingly simple dramas. If the rest of the episodes are as touching, moving, and casually engaging as what I’ve seen from The Loop, Amazon already has one of the sharpest pieces of sci-fi. —Jacob Oller

24. Undone

Created by: Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Kate Purdy
Stars: Rosa Salazar, Angelique Cabral, Constance Marie, Siddharth Dhananjay, Daveed Diggs, Bob Odenkirk

Watch on Amazon Prime

Loops, quantum entanglement, and a lot of screwed-up people: Time travel shows have fully embraced the inverse relationship between narrative linearity and character troubles. The latest to do so is Undone, the rotoscoped Amazon series from BoJack Horseman creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg. It’s not just nonlinear—it’s antilinear. Linear storytelling is antithetical to its entire premise, as embracing atypical perception is its goal. The perse (and neuroperse) experiences of its characters—told through immigrant stories, multicultural backgrounds, and yes, those that can screw with the timeline—exist to create a message of complicated inclusion that makes the bold yet repetitive show completely unique. Thankfully, it’s also visually exciting enough to sustain most of its philosophical musings, with a central character charming enough to shoulder some head-shaking misfires.

Rosa Salazar plays Alma, a small-scale rebel—one who wouldn’t feel out of place in a Linklater film—who has a brush with death in a car accident. Afterwards, the ordinarily strict workings of time play hooky and she sees her dead dad (Bob Odenkirk) appear before her. He goes full Hamlet and tells her that he was actually murdered. Of course, Alma is the only one who can set things right thanks to her special abilities.

It’s a strange story, and it only gets stranger as we follow Alma down the rabbit hole. The characters, which include Alma’s sister Becca (Angelique Cabral) and mom Camila (Constance Marie) alongside her ghost pop’s existential Yoda (there’s even a “there is no ‘try’” moment), are more coherent than the tale they’re telling, which is the only way a show that’s attempting to be mysterious but not cliffhanger-y can keep you watching. Undone is ambitious to a fault, beautiful as all get-out, but more enjoyable when its focus doesn’t stray too far from its great lead performance.—Jacob Oller

23. The Legend of Vox Machina

Created by: Matthew Mercer
Stars: Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham

Watch on Amazon Prime

Prime Video’s The Legend of Vox Machina arrives just as D&D’s corporate owners are also making moves to bring the property back to the big screen and fans of roleplaying games are interrogating the hobby’s foundational biases. While the show doesn’t have any official connection to the game, the setting and characters are transparently grounded in tabletop RPG logic and archetypes. The voice actors of Critical Role reprise their roles in this (really violent, occasionally sexually explicit) animated series about a group of down-on-their-luck mercenaries engaging in high adventure, bar room brawls, and other familiar high fantasy shenanigans. In a departure from other attempts to adapt RPG properties, the show’s focus is much more on the characters’ grim backstories and a lived-in group dynamic than any fusty lore. While the principal cast itself isn’t the most perse, the show studiously avoids the underlying biases that the TTRPG industry and community are interrogating and reflects the sensibilities of a new generation of eager gamers. —Kenneth Lowe

22. Sneaky Pete

Created by: Bryan Cranston
Stars: Giovanni Ribisi, Marin Ireland, Shane McRae, Peter Gerety, Margo Martindale

Watch on Amazon Prime

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. The result is a series whose humor is based on the interplay between truth and fiction, what is real and what is fantasy, and the gradual understanding of what constitutes “family”: Sneaky Pete’s revelations are unlikely to earn commendation from the Family Research Council, but for those of us who understand that families comprise people who love each in whatever structure works for them, it’s the ultimate show about family. —Lorraine Berry

21. Vanity Fair

Created by: Gwyneth Hughes
Stars: Olivia Cooke, Claudia Jessie, Tom Bateman, Johnny Flynn

Watch on Amazon Prime

Vanity Fair is a woefully under-adapted period piece, likely because its central character is pretty much the antithesis of everything we’ve come to expect from heroines in stories like this. But this whipsmart adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel has never felt more relevant, with its grifter leading lady and constant acknowledgement that humanity is generally no better than it has to be.

In this 2018 adaptation, Olivia Cooke makes a sly, pitch-perfect Becky Sharpe (Reese Witherspoon always had too much of an America’s Sweetheart vibe to be believable this role, IMO), who revels in her ambition. There’s something intensely entertaining about watching her scam her way into the upper echelons of society. Plus, everyone around her is even worse, even if they are played by the sort of British acting talent that includes everyone from Martin Clunes and Frances de la Tour to Tom Bateman. —Lacy Baugher

20. Alex Rider

Created by: Guy Burt
Stars: Otto Farrant, Stephen Dillane, Vicky McClure, Andrew Buchan, Brenock O’Connor

Watch on Amazon Prime (with ads)

This newest take on Alex Rider is something entirely different. More of a piece with what teen TV has become in in the last decade—slick, serious, cinematic and mature, with a strong bent towards internationalism and persity—it’s the kind of spy drama you can recommend indiscriminately to your adult friends. So what if its reluctant spy hero is a teenage boy? The show takes him seriously, which means their fictional version of the SAS takes him seriously, which means the deeply realistic bad guys out to literally kill him also take him seriously. And while that much seriousness has the tendency to drag lesser adult action series to an absolute standstill, the hyper-realistic teen antics Alex and his tiny circle of friends get up to, even in the midst of life-or-death situations, serve as useful tonal ballast that lends the series just enough warmth and humor to bolster the rest of the story’s inherent tension. (That the soundtrack is excellent definitely helps.)

And when I say tension, I mean tension. The story the Alex Rider team have chosen to take on for the show’s first season, which mostly comes from the second book of the series, Point Blanc, finds Alex (Otto Farrant) on a mission to embed himself at a mysterious boarding school for troubled, ultra-wealthy youths. Isolated high in the French Alps and run by a virulently racist South African expat named Dr. Greif (Haluk Bilginer), the shadowy Point Blanc academy becomes a point of SAS interest when Alex’s spy uncle is killed after his investigations into the “accidental” deaths of two otherwise unconnected global power players—which had turned up evidence that both died shortly after Point Blanc sent their now-perfect kids back home.

That said, there are a few elements of the series that jangle more than they should. Of course, Alex Rider is still a spy drama, and as such is obliged to have its characters make a lot of silly decisions for the sake of plot. But if watching 2020 torturously unfold for the last eleven months has convinced me of anything, it’s that the existence of rich teen Nazis with a chip on their shoulder and the will to wreck the world ought to be taken much more seriously than any of us might want to believe, and Treadstone-esque Alex Rider gets it. It’s a sophisticated spy thriller custom-made for the Bourne Identity set. More good news: It was just renewed for Season 2. —Alexis Gunderson

19. Red Oaks

Created by: Joe Gangemi, Gregory Jacobs
Stars: Craig Roberts, Ennis Esmer, Jennifer Grey, Gage Golightly, Paul Reiser, Richard Kind

Watch on Amazon Prime

Red Oaks arrived with a hell of a pedigree. It’s produced by Steven Soderbergh and David Gordon Green, the latter of whom 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. Set in a country club in New Jersey in the mid-’80s, the show openly evokes movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Caddyshack and The Flamingo Kid, and with a consortium of creators who understand both comedy and drama behind it, it falls into the same realm of bittersweet nostalgia as beloved comedies like The Wonder Years and Freaks and Geeks. —Garrett Martin

18. Homecoming

Created by: Eli Horowitz, Micah Bloomberg
Stars: Julia Roberts, Bobby Cannavale, Stephan James, Shea Whigham

Watch on Amazon Prime

Walter Cruz (Stephan James) is a young veteran who, along with his friend Shrier (Jeremy Allen White) and a few dozen more, has checked into the Homecoming facility to help adjust to civilian life. And it’s weird. Things are off, but we can’t really put our fingers on why. We also meet Julia Roberts’ Heidi Bergman, Walter’s caseworker, who immediately appeals to our need for stability—until we realize, thanks to a multi-year flash forward where she’s working as a waitress with only fuzzy memories of Homecoming, that she’s not stable at all. What the hell happened between now and then? And, wait, what exactly was going on then, anyways? Directed by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail, the first season of Homecoming is a blessed 10 half-hour episodes. That alone should be enough to get you in the door. What will keep you there is a stunning story of purpose, justice, and the work ethic that powers both the evil of America and the forces trying to save it. You will be sucked into one of TV’s most compelling mysteries (a second season with a new cast doesn’t quite reach those heights, but is worth checking out). —Jacob Oller

17. Modern Love

Created by: John Carney
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, Dev Patel, John Slattery, Andrew Scott, Catherine Keener

Watch on Amazon Prime

Where can you find Anne Hathaway, Catherine Keener, Tina Fey, John Slattery, Jane Alexander, Dev Patel and the hot priest from Fleabag? In Amazon’s delightful, surprising and poignant eight-episode anthology series Modern Love. Based on the must-read and ever popular New York Times first person column of the same name, each installment stands alone with the vibrant city of New York, all its positives and negatives being the one recurring character. Like the column, the series explores all kinds of love — including romantic, parental, platonic and self. It examines, among other things, the tribulations of dating, the struggles of marriage, and the difficulties with raising children.

The Modern Love column ranges from 1,500 to 1,700 words. Getting published is highly competitive and a career pinnacle. It’s the brevity of the stories that pull the reader in. At that word count, there’s no room for filler or fluff. Every word is precise and with intent.

The episodes, which run from 28 to 34 minutes, follow the same approach. In a TV landscape full of bloated episodes, pointless dialogue, and unnecessary scenes, the precise conciseness of Modern Love is nothing short of glorious. There’s no room for anything extraneous. The installments have the unique ability to instantly introduce a character to the audience and have viewers feel as if they know them intimately. I’ve watched shows for years where I feel like I know the characters less.—Amy Amatangelo

16. One Mississippi

Created by: Tig Notaro
Stars: Tig Notaro, Noah Harpster, John Rothman, Rya Kihlstedt

Watch on Amazon Prime

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. The people who inhabit Tig’s world, from her emotionless stepfather to her clingy girlfriend, pulse with a realism rarely seen on TV. They aren’t TV characters. They’re real people who will remind you of your own family and loved ones. One Mississippi didn’t receive the hype of Amazon’s other original series. But it deserved to and now’s your chance to rectify that. —Amy Amatangelo

15. The Wilds

Created by: Sarah Streicher
Stars: Sophia Ali, Shannon Berry, Jenna Clause, Reign Edwards, Mia Healey, Helena Howard, Erana James, Sarah Pidgeon, Rachel Griffiths

Watch on Amazon Prime

On paper, The Wilds sounds like a ripoff of Lost, but with teenage girls: after a plane crash, a group of girls land on a mysterious island where they have to not only endure the unknown, but also each other. Like Lost, each episode explores the backstory of one girl, weaving in their pre-crash struggles with identity, heartbreak, abuse, and more with their on-island battle to survive.

The Wilds’s plotting makes for a strong thriller that lends itself to an easy binge, and the characters are well-drawn and multilayered. But the true triumph of the show is how it portrays the peaks and valleys of being an adolescent girl—they are angry at the hands they’ve been dealt, confused about values they’ve been taught to believe, and determined to reach their goals by any means necessary. They are strong but not impervious; they are catty, they are suspicious, and they are loving.

The Wilds is a show I absolutely wasn’t checking for, but after the first episode’s surreal beach-funeral-at-dusk acapella rendition of Pink’s “Raise Your Glass,” you’ll be hooked, too. —Radhika Menon

14. The Man in the High Castle

Created by: Frank Spotnitz
Stars: Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, DJ Qualls, Joel de la Fuente, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Rufus Sewell, Brennan Brown, Callum Keith Rennie, Bella Heathcote

Watch on Amazon Prime

The Amazon original series, based on the 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, could have landed on a number of other networks—or perhaps even in cinemas—at any other time. But the dystopian drama, set in an alternate history in which the United States loses World War II, seems destined for now. The show depicts a not-so-United States in the years following World War II. Germany has taken over the Eastern states. Japan has the West Coast. In between is the neutral zone set along the Rocky Mountains. When Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos), a woman in San Francisco, comes into possession of a newsreel-style film that depicts victory for the Allies, it sets her on a journey that will impact everyone around her. But the strangest thing about The Man in the High Castle is what happened in the U.S. less than six weeks before the second season’s premiere. Donald Trump won the presidential election. A stunned nation had to wrestle with “fake news” and “post-truth.” For anyone who woke up on Nov. 9, 2016, feeling as though they slipped into a parallel universe, the show took on new meaning. —Liz Ohanesian

13. Reacher

Created by: Nick Santora
Stars: Alan Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin, Willa Fitzgerald, Chris Webster, Bruce McGill, Maria Sten

Watch on Amazon Prime

Tom Cruise may have played Jack Reacher in two separate films, but when it comes to the embodiment of the character from the popular Lee Child novels, the actor doesn’t quite match the description. In the long-running book series, Jack Reacher is described as being 6’ 5,” around 250 pounds, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. That’s a far cry from the 5’7” star of Mission Impossible and Top Gun. The height of a lead actor for a television series may seem unimportant, but not in this case. Reacher’s imposing size is part of the character’s identity, something more appropriately personified in the brawny 6’2” Alan Ritchson (Titans, Smallville), who takes over the role in the TV series. Thankfully for viewers, there’s a lot more to Reacher than looking like an intimidating NFL defensive lineman; all of his unique character traits from the Lee Child novels have made their way into the series, as well as his compelling backstory. —Terry Terrones

12. As We See It

Created by: Jason Katims
Stars Rick Glassman, Albert Rutecki, Sue Ann Pien, Sosie Bacon, Chris Pang, Joe Mantegna, Vella Lovell, Tal Anderson

Watch on Amazon Prime

As We See It, executive producer Jason Katims’ Prime Video dramedy, is a refreshing take on both the coming-of-age story and on TV’s depictions of people on the Autism spectrum. Led by a cast of actors who have ASD, the series doesn’t sugar-coat the disorder or coddle the three main characters. It shows them falling in love, making mistakes and learning how to navigate careers and friendships. And while these characters may struggle to find their places in a neuro-typical world, viewers without ASD may find that the challenges the trio face aren’t that different from theirs. —Whitney Friedlander

11. The Boys

Created by: Eric Kripke
Starring: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Chase Crawford

Watch on Amazon Prime

Based on Garth Ennis’ bloodsoaked comic book satire of the same name, Amazon’s The Boys takes place in a world where superheroes are modern celebrities. Thanks to a partnership with the ironically Amazon-like corporate juggernaut Vought International, over 200 supers bring in billions a year from movies, commercials, and every endorsement that comes within reach. When a superpowered being behaves a badly, Vought is there to pick up the pieces, sometimes of people’s families. The world we see in The Boys is a savagely cynical place, full of sociopathic superheroes, conspiracies, staggering violence, and debauchery.

Yes, it’s crass as hell and one of the most violent shows on TV right now. But deep down, when you push past the gore, sex, and horrors committed to screen, the thing that sticks with you is the show’s emotional core. That, and a truly shocking final sequence in Season 1 that will leave fans of the comics reeling. If you’ve grown tired of superhero stories, here’s one last essential tale to take out your frustrations on people who wear capes.—John-Michael Bond

10. Patriot

Created by: Steve Conrad
Stars: Michael Dorman, Terry O’Quinn, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Chernus, Kathleen Munroe, Aliette Opheim

Watch on Amazon Prime

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? What if the American version of a Bond film replaced the car chases, femme fatales, and slick gadgets with the dark humor of the Coen brothers, mixing deep ennui with side-splitting moments of levity? That’s Patriot in a nutshell. The stakes are high—keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of an Iranian extremist leader—but everything depends on our hero, John Tavner, (Michael Dormer) first navigating the mid-level corporate world of industrial piping. —Josh Jackson

9. The Expanse

Created by: Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby
Stars: Thomas Jane, Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Paulo Costanzo

Watch on Amazon Prime

In 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. Sound familiar? In its relationship to our own age of authoritarianism, the series offers a kind of storytelling that seems essential: It manages to paint a portrait of a pided universe without vilifying one group and raising the other to god-like status, as evidenced by the complexities of hardboiled detective Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) or U.N. official Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo). The Expanse shows us a possible future, a future in which women can be leaders without the bat of an eye, in which racially perse groups can unite in common cause, but it is also a warning about keeping institutions in check, about recognizing inequality wherever it might exist, in order to avoid past mistakes. In other words, it’s must-watch television for our time. —Elena Zhang

8. Mozart in the Jungle

Created by: Paul Weitz, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman
Stars: Gael Garcia Bernal, Lola Kirke, Bernadette Peters, Malcolm McDowell

Watch on Amazon Prime

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. Kirke’s charming and grounded protagonist provides a nice anchor when paired with the show’s more wonderfully outlandish characters, which includes turns from Saffron Burrows, Bernadette Peters, and Malcolm McDowell. The series’ true star, however, is Gael Garcia Bernal as the ensemble’s eccentric and flamboyant new conductor who struggles to reconcile his experimental tendencies with the symphony’s more rigid, conservative structure. Even as it gathers up more emotional depth and complexity throughout its short run, Mozart in the Jungle is the kind of fun and vibrant experience that one would have no trouble bingeing in a day or two. —Mark Rozeman

7. The Wheel of Time

Created by: Rafe Judkins
Stars: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney, Josha Stradowski, Zoë Robins, Madeleine Madden, Marcus Rutherford, Barney Harris, Kate Fleetwood, Priyanka Bose, Sophie Okonedo

Watch on Amazon Prime

“The wheel weaves as the wheel wills,” and for Amazon Prime Video’s new fantasy series, it wills it quickly. Running an economic eight hourlong episodes, The Wheel of Time is a brisk entry to Robert Jordan’s massive novel series, which evidently contains 2782 distinct characters. Amazon’s version doesn’t have quite that many, not yet, but I can genuinely say that as a newbie to the franchise it took me several episodes and many tabs to understand what anyone’s name actually was. And yet, this adaptation—developed by Rafe Judkins—does everything it can to be accessible to viewers unfamiliar with the source material.

It doesn’t hurt that the fantasy beats are familiar: There is a battle between light and dark, as well as a Chosen One (the “Dragon Reborn”) who will fight to save humanity—or destroy it in the process. There are critters and creatures and a magic that can only be wielded by women, plus a cult looking to eradicate the use of magic, pretenders to the would-be throne, and a hellish army of darkness. Navigating all of this are four young adults (any of whom could be the fabled savior) shepherded by a powerful sorceress named Moraine (Rosamund Pike).

The Wheel of Time teases out so much, but whether or not it eventually fills that out—or if its surface-level telling of this story will lead viewers to a deeper connection with the series itself—is uncertain. For now, it’s a fun ride.—Allison Keene

6. The Underground Railroad

Created by: Barry Jenkins
Stars: Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Pierre, William Jackson Harper

Watch on Amazon Prime

This 10-episode limited series, based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, is a fictional account of two runaway slaves, Cora (Thuso Mbedu) and her partner Caesar (Aaron Pierre), as they traverse the American South via a connection of literal hidden railroads. Helmed by Barry Jenkins, the series is lush and atmospheric while never shying away from the atrocities Cora and Caesar are running from, most notably the persistent slave catcher Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton), who stalks the duo relentlessly.

Each episode plays like a chapter in their journey, one stop on the railroad at a time, and Jenkins is deliberate in his worldbuilding. Georgia and South Carolina and North Carolina feel like different countries with different rules for how to treat Black folk: slaves in one, members of society in another, and illegal to exist in the open in the last. Jenkins fills every location with its own flavors. The first time we see the railroad, it feels like a huge sigh of relief—a literal bright light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s easy for a slavery drama to feel suffocating or paralyzing, and there are parts of The Underground Railroad that are designed to evoke discomfort and stagnancy. But Jenkins’ composition also allows us to examine every side of the story, every perspective at play. The series is urgent even in its slower moments. There is a thudding heartbeat at the center, proving that despite the trauma at the core of the story, the series is about perseverance. And in it is a tale ready to be deemed a classic. —Radhika Menon

5. Bosch

Created by: Michael Connelly, Eric Overmyer
Stars: Titus Welliver, Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino, Lance Reddick

Watch on Amazon Prime

(For a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Season 5, here’s the write-up of a set visit we did in 2019.)

Adapted non-chronologically from Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch detective series and shot like a moody, sun-soaked noir, Bosch is officially Prime’s longest-running original series to date (and unofficially your dad’s secret favorite show). Starring a stoic, steadfast Titus Welliver as its eponymous hardboiled hero, Bosch is a senior Hollywood Homicide detective who loves jazz and is unforgiving in his pursuit of justice—both on the streets of Hollywood (the town) and within the corrupt confines of the LAPD, itself. The series does a fair job setting a tone that consistently challenges the all cops are heroes messaging that’s been baked into Hollywood (the industry) since the days of Dragnet. Yes, Bosch and his closest colleagues (Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino and Lance Reddick, just to name a few) are painted as Good Ones, but at least in their Los Angeles, whenever they’re stymied in their pursuit of justice, it’s not because the bad guys are particularly good at being bad. Rather, it’s because they’re a bunch of overworked civil servants stuck in a system that’s custom-built to protect the wealthy and promote the most privileged, and chew up anyone who doesn’t count as either.

Of course, recognizing the broken system for what it is doesn’t go very far in coming up with a way to fix it, but given where cop shows have been elsewhere in television for decades, managing to complicate the myth of American policing even a little isn’t nothing. That Bosch has been chasing complication since Season 1—and doing so with such a hauntingly sharp visual style, and such a stupendously solid ensemble cast? Better still. (And if nothing else, at least it’s given us one of the best title sequences in mystery series history.) —Alexis Gunderson

4. Good Omens

Created by: Neil Gaiman
Stars: Michael Sheen, David Tennant

Watch on Amazon Prime

Neil Gaiman’s passionate fans can safely pe into this adaptation of Good Omens; since the author served as showrunner and handled the script himself, his vision comes through very much intact. The six-part series follows the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant) as they team up to avert the apocalypse. It has sensibilities that recall the work of Terry Gilliam and the films of Powell and Pressburger. It’s funny, eccentric (sometimes downright hammy), and quite poignant, and it’s got a totally delightful script and a mostly amazing cast, including Frances McDormand as the voice of God and Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Satan. But for all its virtues, the standout feature of Good Omens is the incredible chemistry between Tennant and Sheen, who make sparks fly every time they appear on screen together. Happily for us, that’s most of the show.—Amy Glynn

3. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Created by: Amy Sherman-Palladino
Stars: Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Bornstein, Michael Zegen, Marin Heinkle, Tony Shaloub

Watch on Amazon Prime

It has its flaws, but Amy Sherman-Palladino’s tale of a 1950s housewife-turned-aspiring stand-up—starring the luminous Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Maisel—is a real charmer. Whether delivered at cocktail parties, in court, or on stage, Midge’s act, honed into a “tight ten” under the guidance of manager Susie Meyerson (Alex Borstein), is the series’ highlight: When Brosnahan gains steam, Midge’s raw, fast-talking fury becomes a performance, steering into the emotional skid and catching each laugh before it careens off the precipice. She’s a natural because her comedy is, yet Sherman-Palladino’s direction—treating the sets as set pieces, separated from life by the glare of the spotlight—maintains the border between life and art, permeable though it may be. As a comedy, and on the subject of comedy, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has the feeling of a star turn, at once vulnerable and self-aware.

Though it has sustained some (perhaps rightful) backlash for being a fantasia of privilege, those fantasy aspects of Maisel are still really fun. It’s wry, witty, and occasionally deeply emotional. But for the most part, it comes down to having a lot of funny words and a lot of beautiful costumes, with the exceptionally charming Brosnahan pulling Maisel back from the brink of occasionally becoming a little too theatrical. In fact, everyone in this swirling, whimsical series is excellent, most especially the aforementioned long-suffering Susie (in particular Susie’s low-stakes kidnapping and her later assimilation into the wealthy Jewish getaway where Midge’s family has holed up for the summer in Season 2). Maisel is pure escapism with some occasional well-earned bite.—Allison Keene and Matt Brennan

2. Catastrophe

Created by/Starring: Rob Delaney, Sharon Horgan

Watch on Amazon Prime

Catastrophe is absolutely one of TV’s best series, and its recent farewell means we’re losing one of the medium’s funniest comedies—one that cuts to the core of life’s daily hassles. We’re also losing the most achingly honest show about marriage, parenting, and the daily slog of raising a family, particularly when your children are young. The series’ greatest gift has always been its dark, dark humor. On TV, children are often treated as an accessory or a character trait, not as beloved tiny humans who have an enormous impact on your life. That never happened on Catastrophe. The series’ look at marriage (particularly a marriage based on the pregnancy results of a one night stand, now in the thick of raising small children), was equally realistic. In its four-season run, Catastrophe remained as sharp, as biting, and witty as ever. Few shows ever maintain such a creative high. —Amy Amatangelo

1. Fleabag

Created by: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sian Clifford, Olivia Colman Andrew Scott, Brett Gelman

Watch on Amazon Prime

The perfectly crafted Fleabag, running an economical twelve episodes over two seasons, is one of television’s most stunning comedy achievements. The fourth wall-breaking U.K. series from creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge is sharp, clever, and devastatingly emotional. Every word spoken is carefully crafted and full of meaning, creating a fully immersive experience where we act as Fleabag’s curious confidants through her personal trials.

In its long awaited second (and final) season, Fleabag sees our heroine still reeling from the death of her best friend and her culpability in what happened. “I want someone to tell me how to live my life because I think I’ve been doing it wrong,” she wails in the fourth episode. But living your life is difficult when you have a sister who blames you for all her problems (“We’re not friends. We are sisters. Get your own friends,” Claire tells her) and a father who gives you a therapy session as a birthday gift (which leads to a delightful cameo from Fiona Shaw). Fleabag also cuts to the core of the female experience. Whether it’s Fleabag rightly explaining that how your hair looks can be the difference between a good day and a bad day or guest star Kristen Scott-Thomas, whose character receives a women in business award in the third episode, only to rightly decry it as the “fucking children’s tables of awards,” explaining menopause as “it’s horrendous and then it’s magnificent.”

The series succeeds because it never has disdain for its characters and their tragic dysfunction. It never mocks them. It merely lays them bare for everyone to see. Martin’s stifling cruelty. Claire’s overwhelming unhappiness. Their dad’s desperation not to be lonely. The godmother’s narcissism as a cover for her acute insecurity.

When it comes to those last episodes, I don’t want to say too much about the relationship between Fleabag and a certain hot priest, because the way it unfolds is so perfect and surprising and, in the end, redeeming. But I will say that Andrew Scott, who wears a priest’s robe very well, creates a character that is fully realized: a person who swears and makes mistakes but is still devoted to his faith. Their love story is one of salvation.—Amy Amatangelo and Allison Keene

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