Streaming Guide
Prime Video Hidden Gems: The Shows Amazon Buries
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
Prime Video has a structural problem that Netflix does not: the storefront is also a shop. Rentals, channel add-ons and included titles all sit in the same rows, so the interface spends most of its attention selling you things rather than showing you what you already have. The result is that Amazon's own back catalog is close to invisible.
So this list has a rule. Nothing here is one of the four titles Amazon markets on every billboard. If you have seen the ads, it is not on this page. These are eleven Prime Video originals with verified years, season counts and country of origin, most of them finished, all of them worth an evening.
The best of the buried dramas
Patriot is the one people mean when they say Amazon used to make strange television. An intelligence officer takes a cover job at an industrial piping firm and processes his trauma by writing folk songs that give away classified information. It is deadpan to the point of surrealism and then unexpectedly devastating. Choose it if you like comedy that never signals when to laugh. Prime Video, 2015 to 2018, two seasons, eighteen episodes.
Homecoming is Sam Esmail directing Julia Roberts in half-hour episodes about a facility for returning soldiers that is not what it claims. Season two swaps the cast and the register entirely. Choose it for the craft; the framing and the score are doing as much work as the script. Prime Video, 2018 to 2020, two seasons.
The Underground Railroad is Barry Jenkins adapting Colson Whitehead, ten episodes, and it is the most formally ambitious thing on this list by a distance. Choose it if you have the time and attention it demands. Skip it if you want something to have on. Prime Video, 2021, limited series.
Goliath is Billy Bob Thornton as a wrecked lawyer taking on impossible cases across four seasons, and it gets weirder and more atmospheric as it goes rather than settling into a formula. Choose it if you want a legal show with a mood. Prime Video, 2016 to 2021, four seasons.
Crime, but not the obvious kind
Sneaky Pete is a con man who assumes his cellmate's identity and moves in with the cellmate's family, who run a bail bonds business. Giovanni Ribisi is very good at looking like a man doing arithmetic. Choose it if you want a plot machine that keeps working for three seasons. Prime Video, 2015 to 2019, three seasons.
Bosch is straight, unfussy Los Angeles police procedural from the Michael Connelly novels, and its virtue is consistency: it does the job the same way every week for years. Choose it if you want something to work through slowly. Prime Video, 2015 to 2021.
Dom is a Brazilian series in Portuguese, based on a true story, about a police officer whose son becomes one of Rio's most wanted drug traffickers. Three seasons. It is a father-and-son tragedy first and a crime show second. Choose it if City of God is a reference point for you. Prime Video, Brazil, 2021 to 2024, three seasons.
Deadloch is an Australian comedy crime series set in a small Tasmanian town during a winter festival, with two detectives who cannot stand each other. It is genuinely funny and the mystery holds. Choose it if you want to laugh at a murder show without it being smug. Prime Video, Australia, since 2023, two seasons.
The odd ones
Undone is rotoscoped animation about a woman who starts moving through time after a car crash, and whether that is a gift or a symptom is the actual subject. Two seasons, half-hour episodes. Choose it if you want something that looks like nothing else. Prime Video, 2019 to 2022, two seasons.
The Devil's Hour starts with a woman waking at 3.33am every night and turns into something much larger by the end of the first season. Peter Capaldi is in it and is using every bit of his register. Choose it if you like a mystery that reveals its rules slowly. Prime Video, 2022 and 2024, two seasons, with a third ordered and undated.
Red Oaks is a gentle 1980s coming-of-age comedy set at a New Jersey country club, three seasons, and it is the least ambitious thing here and possibly the most rewatchable. Choose it if you want something warm and low-stakes. Prime Video, 2014 to 2017, three seasons.
A note on what is missing
You will notice this list does not include Amazon's four most-promoted originals. That is deliberate. A hidden gems list that leads with the shows on the front page is not a list, it is a homepage with extra steps. If you have not seen those four, watch them, but you do not need me to tell you they exist.
Where these stream
These are Prime Video originals, so the home is stable, but a few have appeared on other services internationally and some rotate in and out of the included tier. Where a title streams changes, and the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
Start here
If you only try one, make it Patriot. If you want a crime show to live in, Bosch. If you want to laugh, Deadloch. If you want to be genuinely impressed, The Underground Railroad.
If you would rather not scroll at all, give BingeNext's TV recommendations a few shows you already love. You get picks, the reason for each, and where they stream. It takes about a minute.
Topics covered: hidden-gems, prime-video, amazon, underrated, streaming
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.