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The strongest Prime Video picks in Tom’s Guide’s August 7, 2024 roundup ranged from the irreverent Tudor fantasy My Lady Jane and the relationship-driven spy thriller Mr. & Mrs. Smith to Reacher, Fleabag, The Expanse, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This is a historical snapshot, not a claim about the catalog today. Prime Video’s library changes by country, licensing arrangement, and date, so check your local service before planning a binge.
Tom’s Guide’s use of “best” was an editorial recommendation rather than an objective ranking. The list also combines Amazon originals with licensed programming and titles whose availability may change. Use the mood guide below to find the most suitable starting point, then browse the full recommendations.
Quick picks by mood
| If you want… | Start with… | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fast, irreverent fantasy | My Lady Jane | An alternate-Tudor romance with swordplay, shapeshifters, jokes, and an intentionally modern attitude. |
| Espionage with relationship tension | Mr. & Mrs. Smith | Two strangers must perform marriage while carrying out dangerous assignments. |
| Straightforward action | Reacher | A physically imposing former military police officer investigates conspiracies and violent crimes. |
| Dark superhero satire | The Boys | A brutal, cynical take on what happens when superpowered celebrities operate above the law. |
| Surreal social commentary | I’m a Virgo | Boots Riley’s strange, political coming-of-age story follows a 13-foot-tall young Black man. |
| Animated adult comedy | Hazbin Hotel | Hell’s princess tries to rehabilitate demons instead of accepting endless exterminations. |
| A compact, acclaimed binge | Fleabag | Two tightly constructed seasons deliver comedy, grief, family conflict, and emotional fallout. |
| Big fantasy world-building | The Wheel of Time | Moiraine and the Aes Sedai search for the Dragon Reborn as an existential threat grows. |
| Space opera | The Expanse | Earth, Mars, and the settlements of the asteroid belt face political and interplanetary conflict. |
| A period drama | Downton Abbey | The Crawley family and their servants navigate social change through family melodrama and historical upheaval. |
The recommendations
My Lady Jane
My Lady Jane reimagines the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey as a fast-moving historical fantasy rather than a strict account of Tudor history. Its alternate England contains a conflict between shapeshifting Ethians and non-magical Verities, while the story mixes sword fights, romance, political danger, and deliberately anachronistic humor.
It is the best choice here for viewers who want a period romance with supernatural rules and a playful tone. Amazon’s official description said all eight episodes were available when the full season premiered on June 27, 2024. If the alternate-history premise appeals to you, you can also read the book behind My Lady Jane as optional companion material.
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Mr. & Mrs. Smith
This spy drama begins with two strangers recruited as agents and assigned a cover identity: a married couple. The professional mission creates the external suspense, but the central hook is the pressure of trying to build or imitate a relationship while concealing dangerous secrets from one another.
The eight-episode series debuted on February 2, 2024, and Amazon announced a second-season renewal later that year. Choose it if you want espionage that treats communication, trust, and domestic friction as seriously as gunfights and missions.
Hazbin Hotel
Hazbin Hotel is an adult animated comedy set in Hell. Charlie, Hell’s princess, believes demons can be rehabilitated, and she attempts to offer them an alternative to recurring exterminations. That setup gives the series a broad ensemble of damaged, flamboyant, and frequently outrageous characters.
The tone is dark, irreverent, and intentionally excessive. It is a natural pick for adults who want animation that is not aimed at children and who enjoy musical-comedy energy, morally chaotic characters, and a setting that treats damnation as both a joke and a social system.
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Adapted from Lee Child’s novels, Reacher follows former military police officer Jack Reacher as he investigates crimes and confronts conspiracies involving people far more powerful than the local authorities. The series is built around direct action, methodical investigation, and Reacher’s ability to turn seemingly small clues into a larger case.
Season two had arrived in December 2023, which made the show one of the most obvious action recommendations in the August 2024 snapshot. It suits viewers who want a muscular thriller with a clear hero, escalating danger, and a procedural backbone. For readers who want to continue beyond the screen adaptation, the Lee Child Reacher novels are the natural companion.
I’m a Virgo
Boots Riley’s surreal social satire centers on Cootie, a 13-foot-tall young Black man who has been raised in isolation. When he enters the outside world, his size makes him an object of fear, fascination, and commodification. The show uses that extraordinary premise to examine identity, celebrity, power, and the systems that decide who is treated as a person or a spectacle.
This is not conventional superhero entertainment. It is stranger, more politically charged, and more interested in how society responds to difference than in delivering familiar heroic beats. Pick it when you want a short, imaginative series that will give you ideas to discuss after the episode ends.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel follows Midge Maisel, a 1950s Jewish housewife in New York who pursues stand-up comedy after her carefully arranged life changes. The show balances fast dialogue and performance comedy with family drama, romantic complications, professional ambition, and the restrictions of its period setting.
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s creative voice is central to the experience: the series is energetic, stylish, and densely written without abandoning its emotional stakes. It is a strong choice for viewers who want a period piece but prefer backstage comedy clubs, family arguments, and career reinvention to grim historical realism.
Citadel
Citadel is a large-scale espionage thriller built around former agents Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh. After the global spy agency Citadel is destroyed, the pair must contend with erased memories and the opposing syndicate Manticore. Recovering their past becomes inseparable from figuring out whom they can trust and what happened to their organization.
Rank #2
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The appeal is scale: international intrigue, expensive-looking action, secret identities, and a mythology designed for a franchise. Choose it when you want a high-budget spy adventure rather than a contained character study.
Daisy Jones & the Six
This limited series traces the rise and breakup of a 1970s rock band, with the surviving participants eventually revealing what really happened. Its documentary-style interviews and conflicting memories turn the band’s history into a mystery as well as a music drama. The mythology evokes the emotional mythology surrounding Fleetwood Mac without being a retelling of that band’s story.
The series is adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel, so it works particularly well for viewers who enjoy comparing a screen adaptation with its source. The Daisy Jones & The Six novel is optional companion reading, not required preparation for watching the show.
Harlem
Harlem is a comedy about four Black female friends navigating careers, romance, identity, divorce, and changing ambitions in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Its ensemble structure lets the story move between professional setbacks, dating problems, friendship loyalties, and the uncomfortable process of outgrowing an earlier version of yourself.
The second-season storylines highlighted the show’s relationship-driven appeal: the group is not defined by one single problem or one shared life stage. Watch it when you want a contemporary ensemble comedy focused on friendship and adult transitions rather than a single central romance.
Three Pines
Adapted from Louise Penny’s mystery novels, Three Pines stars Alfred Molina as Inspector Armand Gamache. The French-Canadian setting gives the series a distinct atmosphere, while Gamache’s investigations are as interested in people, grief, and community tensions as they are in identifying a killer.
This is a humane, observational alternative to a more conventional crime procedural. It should appeal to viewers who prefer character and place alongside the mystery, especially those who want a detective who listens and observes rather than simply dominates every room.
A League of Their Own
This 2022 series takes inspiration from the classic baseball film but expands the story into a broader account of women trying to establish themselves in professional baseball during the 1940s. Alongside the sport, it addresses segregation and homophobia, giving its ensemble room to explore the barriers faced by different players and communities.
The show’s chemistry and representation were central to its appeal. One important caveat for anyone starting it: Amazon did not proceed with a second season, so the series is a one-season recommendation rather than the beginning of a continuing television run.
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The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time follows Moiraine and the Aes Sedai as they search for the person known as the Dragon Reborn, whose identity is tied to the fate of the world as a growing threat approaches. Its story offers the large cast, prophecy, magic, political factions, and expanding mythology expected from major fantasy television.
It is one of Prime Video’s major fantasy offerings and a good destination for viewers who want a substantial world to explore. If the adaptation leaves you wanting more history, character interiority, or world-building, The Wheel of Time books provide the source material and companion reading.
Rank #3
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Paper Girls
Paper Girls begins with four newspaper delivery girls in 1988 who become time travelers after Halloween. The premise has an obvious coming-of-age science-fiction appeal, and comparisons with Stranger Things are understandable, but the show follows its own path through friendship, adolescence, alternate futures, and the shock of meeting versions of the world they thought they understood.
The major caveat is its status: Prime Video canceled the series after one season. It remains a worthwhile choice for viewers who value the setup, young ensemble, and time-travel ideas, but anyone seeking a fully continued television story should know its run ended early.
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This young-adult romantic drama follows Belly Conklin during a transformative summer with brothers Conrad and Jeremiah. The central love triangle gives the series its immediate emotional engine, while the seasonal setting turns changing friendships, family expectations, and first love into an annual ritual of uncertainty.
Choose it for a lighter, emotionally direct summer watch centered on romance and coming-of-age feeling. It is less concerned with elaborate mystery or world-building than with how one relationship changes the balance between three people who have known one another for years.
The Kids in the Hall
This revival brings back the Canadian sketch-comedy group for new material shaped by the performers’ distinctive taste for awkwardness, absurdity, and deliberately immature behavior. Its comedy is unconventional by design; the sketches often commit to a strange premise rather than smoothing it into a familiar sitcom structure.
The best audience is anyone who already appreciates the group’s style or wants sketch comedy that is less polished and predictable than standard variety programming. The returning performers still provide the ensemble chemistry that made the original act distinctive.
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Fleabag
Created by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag is a compact comedy-drama about a woman trying to manage grief, family conflict, desire, guilt, and self-sabotage. Its humor can be caustic and uncomfortable, but the emotional writing gives the jokes consequences.
With only two seasons, it is an unusually efficient binge: concise, acclaimed, and complete rather than an unfinished long-running project. Pick it when you want a series that can be watched quickly but rewards attention to what its narrator says, avoids, and reveals.
Billions
Billions is a tense, character-driven drama set in the world of finance, ambition, power, and legal maneuvering. Its appeal comes less from learning the mechanics of markets than from watching forceful personalities compete, manipulate, and justify their decisions.
Viewers who enjoy the broad character conflict and moral aggression of shows such as The Sopranos or Mad Men may find a similar attraction here, although the setting and style are distinctly its own. It is a good choice for a long-form rivalry rather than a quick standalone mystery.
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The Boys imagines a cynical, violent world in which superheroes are powerful celebrities who are not necessarily heroic. A group of people attempts to expose or hold them accountable, creating a conflict between ordinary human vulnerability and institutionalized superpowered influence.
Rank #4
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The series became one of Prime Video’s defining originals and helped support related spin-offs. Amazon announced a fifth-season renewal in 2024 before the fourth season premiered, but that dated renewal should not be confused with a guarantee about the current catalog or release schedule. Watch it for savage superhero satire, graphic violence, and a deliberately corrosive view of corporate celebrity culture.
Utopia
Gillian Flynn’s Utopia adapts the British cult series into a conspiracy thriller about comic-book fans who discover a graphic novel that appears to predict pandemics. Their search for answers draws them into a dangerous conspiracy in which the boundary between fictional warning and real-world threat becomes increasingly difficult to trust.
The show is a fit for viewers who like paranoid mysteries, unsettling revelations, and stories where an apparently niche obsession becomes evidence of something much larger. Its tone is darker and more suspicious than a conventional comic-book adventure.
Upload
Upload is a science-fiction comedy built around a corporate-managed digital afterlife. People can upload their consciousness after death, but the experience is shaped by consumer plans, data limits, and the company running the virtual environment. The afterlife therefore becomes both a technological miracle and another subscription service.
Greg Daniels’ involvement helps explain the show’s balance of workplace comedy, romance, mystery, and social satire. Choose it when you want an accessible high-concept series that asks who owns a digital version of a person and what happens when even death becomes a managed consumer product.
Homecoming
The first season of Homecoming follows a therapist who uncovers a conspiracy surrounding experimental treatment for American soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. Based on a podcast, the series uses psychological unease and institutional secrecy rather than conventional science-fiction spectacle.
The second season shifts focus to Janelle Monáe’s character, whose identity and unexplained circumstances become the central mystery. This change in perspective means the show is best approached as a psychological science-fiction anthology-like continuation rather than a simple repetition of the first season’s investigation.
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Barry Jenkins adapted Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by reimagining the Underground Railroad as a literal subterranean railway. The speculative device does not soften the historical brutality of slavery; instead, it gives the series a visual and emotional language for escape, pursuit, memory, and the repeated violence of a system built on dehumanization.
This is the prestige-drama choice on the list: visually ambitious, demanding, and powered by strong performances. It is not casual background viewing, but it is a significant adaptation for viewers seeking historical drama that combines formal invention with an unflinching subject.
Hanna
Hanna is a coming-of-age action thriller about a teenager trained from childhood to become an elite killer. As she tries to uncover the truth about her past, intelligence operatives pursue her, forcing her to learn not only how to survive but also how to define herself outside the program that created her.
The combination of action and identity gives the series more emotional range than a straightforward chase. Pick it for a young protagonist, covert operations, training sequences, and a mystery about the institutions that shaped her life.
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The Expanse
Adapted from the novels by James S. A. Corey, The Expanse is a space opera organized around tensions among Earth, Mars, and the settlements of the asteroid belt. Political inequality, competing national interests, and the practical realities of life across the solar system drive the story as much as its individual mysteries and battles.
Amazon continued the series after Syfy canceled it and brought the television run to an ending in 2021. That makes it a particularly good pick for viewers who want expansive science fiction without starting an abandoned show. The The Expanse novels offer the natural next step for readers who want the larger source story.
Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey follows the Crawley family and the household staff who serve them as British society changes from the early twentieth century onward. Historical milestones provide the backdrop, but the series’ momentum comes from marriages, inheritances, rivalries, class boundaries, deaths, scandals, and the question of whether the estate can survive a changing world.
It is an accessible costume drama for viewers who want a large ensemble and a steady stream of personal stakes. The historical setting matters, but the show remains fundamentally a family and household melodrama with enough forward movement to make a long binge feel brisk.
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Best way to watch Prime Video
What to read after the adaptations
Several of these recommendations connect directly to books. The novels are optional companion reading rather than prerequisites, but they can be useful if a show leaves you wanting more context, a different version of the story, or material beyond the television ending.
- My Lady Jane: Read the source novel for another version of the series’ alternate-history premise.
- Reacher: Lee Child’s novels provide the original Jack Reacher stories and many additional cases.
- Daisy Jones & The Six: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel is the source for the band’s rise, breakup, and retrospective revelations.
- The Wheel of Time: Robert Jordan’s fantasy books, completed with Brandon Sanderson, provide the much larger story behind the adaptation.
- The Expanse: James S. A. Corey’s novels expand the political, scientific, and personal conflicts beyond the television run.
Before you start a binge
- Check your country: Prime Video libraries are market-specific. A title recommended in a U.S.-oriented roundup may not be available in your country.
- Check whether it is included: Prime Video mixes Amazon originals and licensed shows, and some titles can be affected by channel, rental, purchase, or other changing catalog arrangements. Do not assume that every title in this historical list was or is included with a basic Prime membership everywhere.
- Check the date: This list reflects Tom’s Guide’s recommendations as of August 7, 2024. Rights, renewals, cancellations, and episode availability can change.
- Check the commitment: Fleabag, The Underground Railroad, and Daisy Jones & The Six suit viewers who want a contained story. Paper Girls and A League of Their Own ended after one season, while The Expanse reached a television ending in 2021.
Catalog note: “Right now” in the original headline referred to the publication snapshot, not a permanent guarantee. Availability depends on territory and date. Verify the title in your local Prime Video search before relying on this list.
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Is this a current list of the best shows on Prime Video?
No. It preserves Tom’s Guide’s August 7, 2024 snapshot. Prime Video availability changes by country, date, and licensing arrangement, so check the current catalog in your market.
Are all of these shows included with a basic Prime membership?
Not necessarily. The roundup combines Amazon originals and licensed programming, and catalog arrangements can change. Confirm whether a title is included, available through a channel, or offered as a rental or purchase before watching.
Which show should I watch first if I want a short, complete binge?
Start with Fleabag for a concise two-season comedy-drama, Daisy Jones & The Six for a contained music story, or The Underground Railroad for a serious limited-series drama.
Which shows on this list are based on books?
My Lady Jane, Reacher, Daisy Jones & The Six, The Wheel of Time, Three Pines, The Underground Railroad, and The Expanse all have direct connections to novels or book series.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: For the August 7, 2024 snapshot, My Lady Jane was the best fit for playful fantasy romance, Reacher for action, Fleabag for a compact comedy-drama, The Wheel of Time for fantasy world-building, and The Expanse for completed space opera. Treat every recommendation as a dated editorial pick, then verify local Prime Video availability before you press play.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
