When it comes to streaming services, despite their many missteps, most of the focus has been on Netflix. For good reason, too, since it dominates the market, accounting for 33 percent of the downstream traffic in North America, way more than any other streaming service or website. The next closest streaming service competitor is Amazon Prime Instant, which accounts for less than two percent of downstream traffic.
That's a shame.
If you're tired of being d*cked around by Netflix, but you still want to stream great television, Amazon Prime Instant not only has a lot of great television offerings, there are other benefits, too. This is going to sound like a huge sales pitch for Amazon Instant, but for the same yearly cost that you pay to Netflix, you will also get free two-day shipping on all of your Amazon purchases, and for a lot of us who order from Amazon at least twice a month, that will pay for itself without even accounting for their streaming service. For instance, I buy a lot of groceries at Amazon, where it's not only cheaper than at the grocery store, the shipping is free, and someone will bring my toilet paper to my front door. Oh, AND I can watch old episodes of The X-Files on top of that? That's just gravy.
Much of the reluctance of some to try out or switch to Amazon Prime Instant is the concern that there aren't very many good television offerings. NOT TRUE. In fact, there are almost as many as on Netflix, and in many instances, there are shows you can ONLY get on Amazon Prime.
So as a public service to you, and in order to convince you to at least consider the switch (or adding it alongside Netflix simply because of the free shipping offers), here are the 15 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Instant, and it doesn't even include some others that barely missed the cut, like Damages, Lost, Tudors, Downton Abbey, 24, Pushing Daisies, Angel, and the short-lived Jeremy Renner series, The Unusuals.
Battlestar Galatica -- Battlestar Galactica is a show for fairly hard core sci-fi nerds, at least in the later seasons. The first season of the show, however, still stands as one of the best seasons of televised sci-fi of all time, beautifully mixing compelling drama, humanism, and insanely good performances. In my opinion, the show kind of fell apart in later seasons -- particularly a slaggy second and third season -- but it's definitely worth marathoning through.
Life -- This little discussed show is maybe the last great network procedural, which is probably why it was canceled after only two seasons. It makes no sense to me why viewers would reject a detective procedural that also contains personality and great acting, but Life -- which starred Damian Lewis, Sarah Shahi, and Donal Logue -- never really found an audience. But it's never too late.
Dead Like Me -- There are two Bryan Fuller series on Amazon Instant Prime, but I chose Dead Like Me, if only because Pushing Daisies had a creative slide due the the writer's strike. Dead Like Me has a similar whimsical tone, features the amazing Mandy Patinkin, and in my opinion, holds up a little better than Daisies. Just don't watch the Direct-to-DVD movie spin-off. Your curiosity and need for more Dead Like Me is not worth how bad the movie is.
Sons of Anarchy -- If you look at the history of F/X's original dramatic programming, the network has never failed us, and Sons of Anarchy was the drama that started the ball rolling. Some describe it as The Sopranos with motorcycles, but it's much more akin to Hamlet with bad-a$$ motherf*$#ers. Feel free, however, to skip season three, and after the season four finale, temper your expectations. A lot. It slides into the sublimely ridiculous, even if it does still contain a few wrenching gut punches.
Firefly -- Look: Either you're one of the people who have seen Firefly and therefore love it, or you're one of the people who can't stand it because everyone else won't shut up about it. It's 12 episodes at 42 minutes apiece. You can knock it out in a Saturday, and then you can join the correct side of the equation.
Parenthood -- As a parent who also lives away from the nation's pop-culture centers, most of the people I hang out with in real life are 1) parents, 2) who watch all their television on Netflix/Amazon Instant, and 3) are a year or two behind me in everything they watch. They are FINALLY making their way around to Parenthood in droves, and like Jason Katims' other show, Friday Night Lights, it manages to be heartbreaking without being overly sentimental. The family dynamic is very much like Coach and Tami Taylor, only much bigger. The one drawback: Watching the series will inspire in your a real desire to belong to a huge family.
Luther -- In a head-to-head between showdown between Jack Bauer and Luther, the title character played by Idris Elba, forget about it. Bauer would screamed for half a bloody hour, and Luther would’ve returned a cold gaze that woud’ve broken poor Jack Bauer’s soul wide open. Then Luther would casually walk off in his blazer and jeans in search of a real nemesis. There’s a reason Luther isn’t big in the United States yet, and that’s because given all the problems this country has with heart disease, Luther could probably put 20 percent of the country into hospital beds. The show doesn’t even give you time to change your underwear before you sh*t your pants again.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- Great action sequences, Joss Whedon cleverness, and characters that you would likely develop a very strong attachment to, Buffy -- even with its occasional cheesiness -- does genre just right. If you've already seen the series, this post -- The 115 Reasons Why We Love Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- should be enough to persuade you to watch it again from the beginning.
Doctor Who -- If you haven't seen Doctor Who, and if you based all your assumptions of the show on the nerdy guy in the coffee shop wearing the University of Gallifrey T-Shirt (me, right now), Doctor Who is not what you think it is: It's a richly humane sci-fi show that's just as concerned with characters as it is with the geeky sci-fi elements. But once you get invested, those sci-fi elements will propel you into the muck of nerddom until one day, you too, will own a TARDIS iPhone cover. You don't need to watch the entire 30-year history of the show; the 2005 reboot will suit you just fine. And if the sci-fi doesn't win you over, Karen Gillan should.
Sherlock -- Far superior to the CBS series, Elementary, and much better than the Guy Ritchie movie franchise, Britain's Sherlock is less a TV Show than a short series of brilliant, whip-smart, and amazingly acted mystery movies. The only drawback: There are only six episodes, and after watching them, you're going to be jonesing for more. Soon. Unfortunately, they won't be arriving until 2013.
Parks and Recreation -- Ron Swanson may be the funniest character of the last decade, but it's not just Swanson (or the hilariously dour April Ludgate) that make the show one of the best on television: It's unlike almost any modern sitcom: Earnest, unironic, and steeped in sweet sentiment. It's funny, but it will also make your heart grow three sizes, anchored by not one -- but two -- of television's most romantic couples.
X-Files -- In addition to being the perfect combination of genre and procedural, X-Files is the show that paved the way for the likes of Lost and Fringe and Alias and every other genre show on network television, which makes The X-Files a great series to watch for historical purposes. It helps, too, that -- at least through the first five seasons -- it did it better than any of the other shows that came after it, although -- be warned -- it manages to f**k up the mythology as much as Lost did.
West Wing -- The first four seasons of The West Wing are the best thing that Aaron Sorkin has ever done. For whatever reason, Sorkin's brand of unctuousness, intelligence, and sentimentality are a perfect fit to this liberal White House and every word sounds perfect coming out of the shows brilliantly constructed characters. There's a straw man in every episode, and Sorkin knocks them down better than anyone. (Skip seasons five and six, but come back for the final season).
Friday Night Lights -- If you haven't seen the most heartwarming, rousing, and endearing dramas in the history of television, despite everything everyone has ever told you about it, I don't know that I can convince you. Coach Taylor -— easily the best television father ever —- is the driving force behind Friday Night Lights, an insanely decent, powerfully Southern man, a guy who refuses to wear his heart on his sleeve (except when it comes to his wife and daughter), and a hard-ass who shows his affection by pushing you harder. Friday Night Lights is one of the few shows in the history of television that will make you want to be a better person, if only because -- in your mind -- you want to be the kind of guy that would make Coach Taylor proud.
Arrested Development -- I don't think there's anything else that can possibly be written about Arrested Development. Either you've seen it, or you're a willfully stubborn idiot. COME ON, WATCH IT ALREADY. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? The one catch with Arrested Development and Amazon Prime Instant, however, is that while you can watch all the old episodes, only Netflix viewers can watch the new season in the Spring.
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/photo/4006/thumb)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/netflix-uproxx-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/arrested-development-best-of-fan-made-tobias-funke-insert-me-anywhere1-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/arrested-developments-amazing-tobias-funke-sizzle-reel-and-website1-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/lucille-gene-parmesan-150x150.gif)
Fringe.
Available on Amazon Prime, not on Netflix.
This! I was expecting to see it on here.
SOA was the drama that got the ball rolling on FX? Say what?
The Shield. That is all.
Agreed.
Agreed.
The show was only on for seven years. You can’t really expect people to remember every flash in the pan.
Can’t give all the credit to the network’s first original drama series. That would be too rational.
yeah what the fuck was that about?
Agree. But yeah, we knew FX before it was cool.
I’m midway into season 4 of SOA and am beginning to pick up that Jax Teller is not a good actor. Good show though, season 3 could have been like 3 episodes instead of 13.
He’s not terrible. Keep in mind he’s British so a lot of times I think he’s concentrating a little too much on the American accent.
YES! Thank you for this, you’ve picked up several that weren’t on my radar- though you’ve missed Justified…
Also, key to Amazon Instant is that you can watch current season (breaking bad, soa) the day after.
Next month – pleasse do the same for Hulu Plus
Didn’t know that about watching the day after. That’s awesome.
I’m putting my Netflix acct on hold until AD starts back up, but i’m definitely checking out Prime. Thanks for the tip.
Justified is still pay-to-watch on AP; this list was dedicated to stuff that’s free with membership.
Forgot I paid for that. Totally worth it!
@drugbust – to be clear, you have to buy the season, but I’m still spending less than cable
I’m going to stare at that Dr. Who picture for a while.
Hello, Amy Pond.
Something about that picture seems off. It looks fake.
Yeah, Kevin seems to be right… I went a-googlin’ for it and found it on a page with a bunch of much more obvious ‘shops. Sadness.
No need to be sad, there are plenty of other legitimate images that demonstrate Ms. Gillan’s incredible hotness.
Soooooo…the Science channel is going to start showing Fringe from the beginning starting November 18 AND they’re having a Firefly 10th anniversary reunion (titled “Browncoats Unite”) on Nov. 11! Yay Science Channel!
[insidetv.ew.com]
I vaguely recall asking for this very list way back when the Netflix one popped up; thanks for doing it! Also, second the request for Hulu Plus as well.
Two issues with Amazon though is they lock you into a one a year contract and that for a lot of the prime content you have a to pay an additional fee.
But I wasn’t aware of the the two day free shipping perk. That could be a game changer for me…
I see it in reverse. I bought it for the free two day shipping because online shopping is so amazingly cheap and you can find great used books for almost nothing. But the video is a great bonus.
Two day shipping no matter how little you order. 99 cent HDMI cable? 2 day shipping. Totally worth it.
I just read that starting soon they’re going to start offering a monthly option.[gizmodo.com]
Actually, no, anything marked ‘Prime’ is what you get with your yearly subscription. This differs from regular ‘Amazon Instant’, which is more of the brand-new stuff you have to buy outright. Amazon.com allows you to search one or the other, or both, and at least on the Roku Amazon app, you can browse just the Prime stuff.
Even with paying for some stuff outright (Walking Dead, Simpsons) my monthly TV expenditure halved when I cut cable/satellite about a year ago.
Pretty sure Battlestar, friday night lights, parks and rec, arrested development are all on netflix instant, as well as damages.
I was paying $150/mo to Comcast for higher-end cable and high speed. The day after Breaking BAd ended, I cut the cable, kept hi-speed, bought a digital antenna and a Roku. Got Netflix, then Hulu+, but by the time I got to Amazon, I thought there was a lot of overlap. The shipping thing IS interesting though. My beef with Hulu? “Hundreds of TV shows!” But fully half of them are Friends and Gray’s Anatomy ripoffs from Korea and Taiwan!
and anime…
I find I use Hulu for Jon Stewart and very little else. The documentaries aren’t bad if you’re a geek like me.
I feel betrayed and bewildered that the DISH spambot didn’t write this article.
All but two of those shows are also on Netflix.
not to mention hearing you have to pay extra for a lot of shows. this did the opposite of sell me on AP.
You generally have to pay outright for the brand-spankin’ new stuff, current seasons. But there is a buttload of not-current-season stuff that Hulu doesn’t have that you can find on Amazon.
My main beef with Netflix when I bailed on them a while back was that they didn’t seem to even have the option for new shows. You basically had to wait until the DVD of a show came out, then it might be available for streaming.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, if you have the capability to stream to your TV at all, or you watch TV on a laptop, it’s worth the effort to list all the TV shows you watch, find where they stream from and how much it all costs, then ask yourself if it’s worth keeping that $120 a month cable bill just to watch Game of Thrones. Maybe it is to you, but to me it wasn’t.
netflix/torrents is the perfect combination for me. anything brand new not on netflix i’ll just steal.
Whoa, how have I never seen that Karen Gillan picture before?
It’s a photoshop.
Damages is better than every one of the shows on the list. Therefore I can only presume that you’re unfamiliar w/ Damages. Shame.
Who is the chick in that picture at the top of the article?
Minka Kelly, you dumb-dumb. You’d know if you’d seen Friday Night Lights. Or kept up with Derek Jeter’s love life. Or Fez’s love life. But, seriously though, how the hell does fucking Fez keep pulling young actresses in their prime?
Or kept up with Zack constantly telling that story about how he stood next to her one time at a concert and she said something to him.
I bet she smelled heavenly.
Not to be a douche, but maybe only like 2 of these aren’t on instant Netflix, so this doesn’t really sway me.
Agreed. I have both and a Kindle Fire to go along with them. With the edition of HBO Go to the Fire I have near unlimited instant viewing.
JESUS! A few shows I’d actually watch; WTF people!