We’ll be updating the list in future months to potentially include new releases or series we’re catching up with. Nevertheless, given the small (but growing) amount of originals on the platform, this felt like an OK compromise to make. Still, the great ones are truly great.īelow, 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. At its best, Amazon’s original series are quirky critical darlings, although few have managed to truly break out. The result has been a hodgepodge of quality, and far fewer series than its streaming competitors. 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.
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. Initially, it had the rather revolutionary idea of combining a traditional pilot season with viewer voting to determine which shows would move forward. Amazon Prime has taken a winding path regarding its original series.
