36 best TV shows streaming on Prime Video

Stars: Karl Urban, Antony Starr, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Elisabeth Shue, Colby Minifie, Aya Cash, Claudia Doumit

Number of seasons included with subscription: 3

Let’s be honest: If superpowers were real, then American capitalism would turn the people who have them into egomaniacal celebrities with god complexes faster than you can say, “So…is the city paying for that?” Based on Garth Ennis’ comics of the same, The Boys imagines a group of vigilantes intent on exposing so-called superheroes in a world where corporate overlords control them. It’s like Watchmen, only way more fun and, frankly, disgusting.

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Stars: Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Boreanaz, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, Charisma Carpenter, Anthony Stewart Head

Number of seasons included with subscription: 7

Our apologies to True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and What We Do In The Shadows—but no vampiric TV show will ever be quite as iconic as Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Sure, creator Joss Whedon imploded his career. But that’s no reason to punish yourself or this stellar cast by writing off the show altogether. Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as the titular Buffy, a young woman who discovers she’s destined to seek and slay demons in the small town of Sunnyvale. At least, she’s got friends (and an ancient prophecy) backing her up.

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Stars: Sharon Horgan, Rob Delaney, Carrie Fisher, Mark Bonnar, Sarah Niles, Tobias Menzies, Ashley Jensen, Frances Tomelty

Number of seasons included with subscription: 4

Co-created by Horgan and Delaney, plot wise, Catastrophe pretty much lives up to its title. The biting British comedy follows Sharon and Rob, who go from strangers to unexpected parents-to-be after hooking up one night. The rom-com uses both characters’ deadpan humor and huge egos to its benefit, crafting a relationship that feels incredibly grounded despite their wild circumstances. The show also marks Fisher’s last TV role, and to no one’s surprise, she delivers a remarkable performance as Rob’s mother.

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Stars: Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Camila Morrone, Suki Waterhouse, Will Harrison, Josh Whitehouse

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

This buzzy miniseries, based on the beloved book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, charts the rise of the show’s titular band, a Fleetwood Mac-esque rock group in the 1970s. As Mary Kate Carr puts it in her review: “As an adaptation, the series is a success, thanks to the competent work of creators Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber and Neustadter’s co-showrunner Will Graham. Anything jettisoned from the source material is barely missed, and what’s brought to life exists even more vibrantly than on the page.”

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Stars: Rachel Weisz, Britne Oldford, Poppy Liu, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Chernus

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

This miniseries, a female-centered riff on David Conenberg’s shocking 1998 film of the same name, stars Rachel Weisz as twin gynecologists. As David Cote puts it in his positive review of the show: “Created by Alice Birch (Normal People), who ran an all-women writers’ room, Dead Ringers is chic, potty-mouthed, and unafraid to wallow in bodily fluids.”

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Stars: Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Forggatt, Phyllis Logan, Jessica Brown Findlay, Rob James-Collier, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol

Number of seasons included with subscription: 6

Created by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey is synonymous with excellent historical drama for a reason. Set in early 20th-century England at a fictional estate in Yorkshire, this family epic follows the aristocratic Crawleys through the changing realities of a world ravaged by global conflict. Understated and slow, but never boring, Downton Abbey offers long-haul character development that remains some of the best the genre has ever witnessed on the small screen.

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Stars: Skyler Gisondo, Kiersey Clemons, Peter S. Kim, Jaboukie Young-White

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

Fairfax isn’t the first adult animated series set in Los Angeles—BoJack Horseman comes to mind—and it won’t be the last. But this under-appreciated half-hour comedy’s tackling of hypebeast culture in a uniquely SoCal setting is worth trying on. When middle schooler Dale (voiced by Skyler Gisondo) moves across the country from Oregon, his new friends help him embark on a mission for coolness and clout that’s surprisingly endearing.

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Stars: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sian Clifford, Andrew Scott, Bill Paterson, Brett Gelman, Olivia Colman, Angus Imrie

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

Based on Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show, British comedy Fleabag is equal parts acerbic and heart-wrenching. The first season is a comedic success, but the second season fully manages to sweep audiences off their feet with a love story from hell. Hot Priest wouldn’t approve of that phrasing, but come on, the romance was true emotional torture—in a great way. The show nabbed multiple Emmy wins in 2019, and remains one of the easiest binges on Prime.

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Stars: Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Taylor Kitsch, Jesse Plemons, Aimee Teegarden, Gaius Charles, Adrianne Palicki, Michael B. Jordan

Number of seasons included with subscription: 5

A series that transcended both high-school and sports shows (and seemed to be almost tailor-made for viewers who don’t particularly like those genres?), Friday Night Lights has a lot going for it: some charming young talent, a strong aesthetic thanks its three-camera-and-minimal-blocking setup, an authentic-feeling small-town backdrop, a very good score and soundtrack, and, as just about everyone who enjoys the show has commented, maybe the best married couple on TV in the form of Coach and Tami Taylor. Those locker-room speeches are pretty damn good, too.

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Stars: Matthew Holness, Matt Berry, Richard Ayoade, Alice Lowe

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1 

“I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who’s written more books than they’ve read.” So says the titular star of this brilliant, hilarious one-season-and-done cult curiosity, in which a bad horror writer (Matthew Holness) looks back on his bad horror TV series from the ’80s, one that up until this fictional making-of doc had only aired in Peru. In his deep dive into the show, Erik Adams called it “the unlikely, six-episode intersection of such iconic Britcoms as The Office, The IT Crowd, and Father Ted—with bits of I’m Alan Partridge and Da Ali G Show thrown in for good measure.”

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Stars: Michael Sheen, David Tennant

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

Created by Neil Gaiman—and adapted from his and Terry Pratchett’s beloved 1990 novel of the same name—Good Omens is a fantastical biblical farce that never lets up. When the Antichrist arrives on Earth, the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant) band together to protect the semi-mortal lives they’ve come to know and love. Season two of the series dropped in July.

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Stars: Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard, Lisa Edelstein, Jesse Spencer, Omar Epps, Jennifer Morrison, Olivia Wilde, Peter Jacobson, Kal Penn

Number of seasons included with subscription: 8

We’ll admit: Gregory House is a terrible doctor whose flippant mistreatment of patients was always unacceptable. We’ll also admit: He’s one of funniest medical providers in TV history (second only to 30 Rock’s Dr. Leo Spaceman). In this long-running hospital dramedy, Hugh Laurie stars as the titular House M.D., a smarmy diagnostician whose lack of bedside manner would lose him his license if he weren’t also a scientific genius. Come for the promise of the killer one-liners; stay because of the super soapy drama.

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Stars: Jharrel Jerome, Mike Epps, Carmen Ejogo, Walton Goggins, Brett Gray, Kara Young

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Boots Riley (Sorry To Bother You) cooked up this wonderfully weird series, which follows a 13-foot-tall teen, Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), in Oakland. As Jenna Scherer puts it in her review: “Riley’s brilliance is to create a fictional setting so over-the-top that it sneaks up on us how close it is to our own. It allows us to realize how outlandish our reality truly is—existence in an impossibly cruel, racist, classist system that is nonetheless marked by flashes of beauty and radical kindness from the very people it exploits.”

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Stars: Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons, Gillian Jacobs, Zazie Beetz, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Zachary Quinto

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Invincible is a bloody good time. The adult-animated drama, based on comics of the same name, follows 17-year-old Mark Grayson’s transformation into a superhero under the tutelage of his father, Omni-Man. The first episode packs a shocking, twisted cliffhanger that sets up the rest of Invinicible’s thrilling arc. The show has already been renewed for two more seasons. As William Hughes writes in his review: “Against all odds—and with guidance from comic creator Robert Kirkman, and under the stewardship of showrunner Simon Racioppa—Invincible manages to make something potentially fascinating out of what should be a disastrous recipe for whiplash.”

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Stars: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Ty Burrell, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Melanie Lynskey, Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Eric Edelstein

Number of seasons included with subscription: 5

Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key have been comedy work wives since MadTV, and they even show up together in the first season of Fargo. Their Emmy-winning Comedy Central sketch comedy remains an iconic gift. For five seasons, the duo covered societal topics with a myriad of skits with memorable characters, from Peele’s take on President Obama to Key’s angry teacher Mr. Garvey.

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Stars: Abbi Jacobson, Chanté Adams, D’Arcy Carden, Roberta Colindrez, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Kelly McCormack, Priscilla Delgado, Nick Offerman

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Can you remake something as beloved as A League Of Their Own without mucking it up? Apparently you can, as Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson’s reboot of the 1992 classic turned out to be fun (and funny) as hell, with a refreshingly wider scope to boot. As Jenna Scherer puts it in her positive review of the first (and only) season: “Maybe most importantly for fans of the original movie, this League is also a good old-fashioned underdog sports drama, complete with training montages, rousing locker room speeches, and edge-of-your-seat home runs.”

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Stars: Morfydd Clark, Lenny Henry, Sara Zwangobani, Dylan Smith, Markella Kavenagh, Robert Aramayo, Benjamin Walker, Ismael Cruz Córdova

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1 

The most expensive show of all time made its debut in September, sweeping us into J. R. R. Tolkien’s Second Age of Middle-earth. As Matt Schimkowitz writes in his recap of the premiere: “Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay’s interpretation of Tolkien’s world doesn’t merely fit neatly with the world Peter Jackson created in the early 2000s, but it also folds into a larger cultural story about Tolkien and what his work continues to inspire in people.”

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Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Alyla Browne, Asher Keddie, Leah Purcell, Frankie Adams, Alexander England

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

This sweeping, Australia-set miniseries stars Sigourney Weaver and Alycia Debnam-Carey as, respectively, the matriarch of a refuge for abused women and her granddaughter. And as Max Gao puts it in his review of the adaptation: “The show largely succeeds as a powerful depiction of solidarity and sisterhood, showing what can happen when women are given the freedom to blossom together.”

Stars: Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Borstein, Tony Shalhoub, Marin Hinkle, Michael Zegen, Kevin Pollak, Caroline Aaron, Luke Kirby, Jane Lynch

Number of seasons included with subscription: 5

Amy Sherman-Palladino brings her colorful Gilmore Girls-esque writing, fast conversations, and sharp humor to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The show follows Midge Maisel, a 1960s housewife-turned-standup-comic. Brosnahan, Borstein, and Shalhoub deliver remarkable performances in this Emmy-winning series, which wrapped up its fifth and final season in May.

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Stars: Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz, Chris Messina, Ed Weeks, Xosha Roquemore, Adam Pally, Beth Grant, Fortune Feimster, Garret Dillahunt

Number of seasons included with subscription: 6

After writing for and starring in The Office for eight seasons, The Mindy Project marked Kaling’s first as a series creator. She plays Dr. Mindy Lahiri in this workplace comedy, which survived shifting from network to streaming, as well as a roster of cast changes. While it’s true that Danny Castellano’s character arc still hurts, at least we’ll always have the surprise Christmas dance he did for Mindy. TMP remains an overall hilarious sitcom (featuring several notable guest stars, from Bill Hader to Ana Ortiz to Timothy Olyphant). Kaling established herself distinctive comedic voice and as a leading lady during its six-season run, which also marked the first time a South Asian actor starred in their own primetime sitcom.

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Stars: Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Rasika Dugal, Shweta Tripathi Sharma, Divyenndu, Vijay Varma, Vikrant Massey

Number of seasons: 2

Think of Mirzapur as a rowdier Succession, with way more violence and entertaining Hindi-language crass words. Set in rural India, the drama follows an iron-fisted crime lord, Kaleen Bhaiyya (Tripathi), who wields immense political power in the small titular town. Multiple people vie for his inheritance, including his sinister heir and two of Kaleen’s new employees. Mirzapur is an intense and fast-paced thriller, one of many hailing from Prime Video India (Paatal Lok is another great option).

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Stars: Rami Malek, Christian Slater, Portia Doubleday, Carly Chaikin, Grace Gummer, Martin Wallström, Michael Cristofer

Number of seasons: 4

Sam Esmail’s riveting thriller follows Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity hacker who struggles with clinical depression and dissociative identity disorder. He’s recruited by an anarchist who calls himself—you guessed it—Mr. Robot to destroy debt records of a giant conglomerate. Dennis Perkins notes in his review of the pilot: “It’s something of a backhanded compliment to say that Mr. Robot is entertainingly derivative. But it’s the show’s over-reliance on aping a handful of familiar predecessors that, in addition to a compelling lead, keeps its pilot episode zipping along.”

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Stars: Michael Dorman, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Chernus, Kathleen Munroe, Aliette Opheim, Chris Conrad, Terry O’Quinn, Debra Winger

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

For what is, on paper, a spy thriller, Patriot is weird—that’s high praise—as well as laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally sweet, and completely original. Michael Dorman stars as the show’s ever-in-existential-crises covert operator, and he leads a fantastic cast that includes Kurtwood Smith, Michael Chernus, Kathleen Munroe, Terry O’Quinn, Debra Winger, and Chris Conrad (the brother of show creator Steven Conrad, and maybe the show’s secret weapon). If you’re a music fan who likes the good stuff, you’re in luck: “Train Song” by Vashti Bunyan soundtracks the home-video intro in season one; there’s also a cover of a Bill Fay cut by Jeff Tweedy (like the Conrads, a Chicagoan); and the folky, Bill Callahan-esque originals Dorman’s character plays throughout the show are always amusing. Watch this show.

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Stars: Toni Collette, Auliʻi Cravalho, John Leguizamo

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

The streamer’s adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s bestselling book, about teen girls obtaining electrical—you guessed it—powers, boasts some thought-provoking world-building and neat special effects. As Meredith Hobbs Coons puts it in her review: “One of the challenges of adapting a novel for the big or small screen is that the level of detail the original can accomplish is often hard to match, but the economy with which exposition is delivered in this show is impressive—and not just that: It’s resonant.”

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Stars: Deborah Ayorinde, Hugh Quarshie, Sarah Niles, Brendan Coyle, Hermione Norris

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

With dashes of Succession, Industry, and Dynasty, this soapy British series from Abby Ajay follows folks vying for control of their family’s cosmetics empire. As Quinci LeGardye puts it in her review: “We’ll check out any show that features estranged relatives going at it for chunks of the family fortune, be they Roys, Lyonses, Greenleafs, or Gemstones. Enter Prime Video’s Riches, a welcome addition to a popular sub-genre, with a cultural twist that gives the formula an exciting boost.”

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Stars: John Boyega, Michael Ward, Kadeem Ramsay, Letitia Wright, Malachi Kirby, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Sheyi Cole, Naomi Ackie, Gary Beadle

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Technically speaking, Small Axe is a film anthology—but we’d be remiss to not recommend all five of its installments as some of the best storytelling on Prime. Writer-director-producer-creator Steve McQueen helms this artfully intense set of stories about West Indian immigrants in London from the ’60s through ’80s. Passionately acted and stirringly specific, the collection offers a compelling look at identity, pride, resistance, and the seemingly endless fight for equality.

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Stars: Lola Tung, Jackie Chung, Rachel Blanchard, Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno, Sean Kaufman, Alfredo Narciso, Minnie Mills

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

We were pretty charmed by The Summer I Turned Pretty, Prime’s adaptation of a novel by Jenny Han (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before), when it debuted last year. And luckily for us, season two is even better. As Lauren Chval writes in her review of the latest batch of episodes: “This is so good that it makes the (already very strong) first season feel like a preamble we had to watch to get to what the show was meant to be. Did you enjoy the fun summer parties and wistful teenage longing set in a gorgeous New England beach house? Great! You’ll still get that, except now it’s intercut with the grief of losing someone you love and a healthy dose of heartbreak.”

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Stars: Jeffrey Tambor, Gaby Hoffmann, Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker, Judith Light, Kathryn Hahn

Number of seasons included with subscription: 4, plus the film Transparent: Musicale Finale

One of the best L.A. shows, period—okay, so it mostly captures a very specific slice of that city, but still—Transparent follows the Pfeffermans as Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out and her children and ex-wife cope with a string of complications. It’s an ambitious show, one that takes big swings—see it’s so-so musical-film sendoff—that mostly connect, creating a complex, modern dramatic tapestry about aging, identity, Jewishness, sex, abuse, and privilege—all heightened by some wonderful performances.

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Stars: Thuso Mbedu, Aaron Pierre, Chase W. Dillon, Joel Edgerton, William Jackson Harper, Amber Gray, Chukwudi Iwuji, Lily Rabe

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk) delivers a defining work of historical drama and magical realism in The Underground Railroad. Thuso Mbedu leads the cast as Cora Randall, an enslaved Black woman who, with the help of abolitionists, attempts to escape Georgia for a life of freedom in the North. It’s a searing, sensational adventure to behold. As Stephen Robinson writes in his review for The A.V. Club: “The Underground Railroad isn’t an easy watch, but like Cora’s testimony, it’s a necessary step forward.”

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Stars: Rosa Salazar, Angelique Cabral, Constance Marie, Siddharth Dhananjay, Daveed Diggs, Bob Odenkirk

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

Undone, the rotoscope-animated series from BoJack Horseman alums Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy, follows Alma Winograd-Diaz (Rosa Salazar), a young woman who wakes from a car accident to find she’s become unstuck in time and space. As Jenna Scherer puts it in her review of Undone’s second season, the show is “a hallucinogenic family dramedy that’s made to be seen and experienced, an ouroboros devouring its own tail—and enjoying every bite.”

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Stars: Robbie Amell, Andy Allo, Allegra Edwards, Zainab Johnson, Kevin Bigley, Owen Daniels, Paulo Costanzo, Josh Banday, Andrea Rosen

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2

Greg Daniels takes on the afterlife in Upload. Robbie Amell stars as a deceased programmer living on in virtual heaven in a half-hour sci-fi comedy that combines the sobering scares of Black Mirror with the warm sensibilities of The Good Place. It’s a generally pleasant watch that still delivers the drama. Admittedly, this one takes a little while to get going, but the shorter second season hits a sweet spot you won’t want to miss.

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Stars: Olivia Cooke, Claudia Jessie, Tom Bateman, Johnny Flynn, Charlie Rowe

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1

Vanity Fair is based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel of the same name, a read as inexplicably under-appreciated by modern audiences as its exquisite TV adaptation. Olivia Cooke stars as Becky Sharp, a firecracker wit whose scheming ways see her climb up (and slip down) the London social ladder in a delicious drama akin to Bridgerton. Fittingly, Claudia Jessie (a.k.a. Eloise Bridgerton) plays Becky’s best friend Amelia.

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Stars: Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw, Alex Jennings, Patricia Hodge, Monica Dolan

Number of seasons included with subscription: 1 

This three-parter has a lot going for it despite its short runtime: Intoxicating direction by Stephen Frears (The Grifters, Philomena), an engaging true-life tabloid story—it follows Jeremy Thorpe (Hugh Grant), the leader of the Liberal Party who’s embroiled in a scandal when his former lover, Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw), accuses him of conspiracy to commit murder—and two commanding leading turns, one of which made our list of the best TV performances of 2018.

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Stars: Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, Clive Standen

Number of seasons included with subscription: 6

If you liked Robert Eggers’ The Northman, then you are going to love Vikings. Across six seasons, writer-creator Michael Hirst pulls liberally from Norse mythology to weave an engrossing tale of vengeance, honor, and destiny that’s as riveting as any episode of Game Of Thrones. When you’re not holding your breath between clashes of steel, you’ll fall into Vikings’ exuberant romanticism.

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Stars: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney, Zoë Robins, Madeleine Madden, Josha Stradowski, Marcus Rutherford, Barney Harris

Number of seasons included with subscription: 2 (season two is currently airing)

Based on Robert Jordan’s book series of the same name, The Wheel Of Time is a feminist-fantasy epic set in a world where only women have the power to wield magic. That might seem like a quirk, but it makes every part of this wondrous world richer and more intriguing for viewers who otherwise could’ve tired of the genre. Rosamund Pike, Zoë Robins, and Madeleine Madden are just some of the strong female leads in this tale of a hiding-in-plain-sight young hero destined to save Earth. The second season is currently airing.

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Stars: Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm

Number of seasons included with subscription: 7

Part The Office and part Party Down, this half-hour situational comedy follows a trio of dude friends who work at a telemarketing company by day and share a house in Rancho Cucamonga by night. Not all of the comedy here has aged, uh, gracefully, but the jokes that still work are doing some serious overtime.

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