As if Amazon didn’t already dominate business and technology, it’s now making moves toward dominating online video streaming with a new lineup of shows for Amazon Prime Video. Today Amazon announced that it’s greenlighted six new, original shows and renewed Alpha House for a second season.
New Amazon Original Series
Six new shows are coming to Amazon Instant Video:
- The After
- Bosch
- Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street
- Mozart in the Jungle
- Transparent
- Wishenpoof!
These shows span a wide range of genres, from shows with more conventionally popular story lines to shows that are a bit less traditional. The Sci-Fi action The After, for example, brought to us from X-Files creator Chris Carter, follows eight strangers who must help each other survive a violent world. And the cop show Bosch, written by Michael Connelly and Eric Overmyer, is based on Connelly’s best-selling book series about an LAPD homicide detective.
Less traditional subject matter can be found in Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent. From Tony-nominated writer and director Alex Timbers and Oscar nominee Paul Weitz, Mozart in the Jungle is a half-hour dramedy about sex, drugs and classical music. The show opens the audience’s eyes to a hidden world of classical music, showing the darker, less put-together side of the New York Symphony. It shows audiences an authentic and somewhat unexpected twist on our traditional views of the symphony and classical music.
Amazon also brings a very real aspect of life to audiences with Transparent, a dramedy about gender issues. The series follows an L.A. father on his transition to womanhood and the ways his three kids cope. In his honesty about his true self as a woman, the father’s transition forces his self-centered children to adjust all while secrets of their own surface.
Children’s Shows
Amazon is also targeting a younger audience with two children’s shows as part of the new Instant Video lineup. Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, created by David Anaxagoras, is a coming-of-age tale for children ages 6-11. The show follows Gortimer and his two friends as they have magical adventures in a suburban neighborhood.
Also for children, Wishenproof! is an animated show about a girl with magical powers who can do whatever she wishes, which fortunately entails using her powers to help others and solve life’s problems. The upcoming show is written by the creator of Blue’s Clues Angela Santomero.
Renewing ‘Alpha House’
After debuting in April 2013, the political comedy Alpha House became the most popular series on Amazon Instant Video. The show, written and produced by Academy Award-nominee and Pulitzer Prize-winner Garry Trudeau, follows four Senators who live together in a rented house in Washington, D.C. So far Alpha House has received over 6,000 five-star ratings from Amazon customers, and viewers enjoyed the show so much they commented asking for a follow-up season. The show will return this summer with its original actors John Goodman, Mark Consuelos, Clark Johnson and Matt Malloy.
Amazon Studios first launched in 2010 and since then, people have submitted more than 8,000 movie and 2,000 series ideas. Catch these new shows on Amazon Instant Video and judge for yourself whether Amazon will start dominating the world of online video streaming.
Featured image by PlayStation.Blog
