Amazon Original Pilots receive greenlight for full seasons
Four adult series are set to receive full seasons, plus political comedy Alpha House returns for a second run
Amazon has announced that it will be producing more original content for its Amazon Prime Instant Video service. The new shows display just how serious Amazon is to become a content producer, not just a provider, and take on market-leader Netflix in the streaming video market.
The pilots receiving seasons include:
The After: From X-Files creator Chris Carter, the show is based in a mysterious post-apocalyptic world where a group of strangers must fight to survive – a little Lost meets Walking Dead then.
Bosch: A more predictable pick for Amazon, as this series is about an LAPD homicide detective and based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling book series,
Transparent: A fmaily drama created by Jill Soloway, Six Feet Under, it’s about a dysfunctional jewish family living in LA.
Mozart in the Jungle: Is a comedic drama set in the modern world of classical music, with big egos clashing and no shortage of sex and drugs to spice things up.
Plus there’s a second season of Alpha House, a political comedy starring John Goodman, and you can currently watch the first three episodes of that for free, without Amazon Prime membership.
Amazon looks to be investing more heavily in the first two, with hour-long shows of The After and Bosch, while the other three series have half-hour running times, actually only 25mins as there are no adverts in the streams as there would be if shown on commercial TV.
We don’t yet know how long each season will be, but the first season of Alpha House was 11 episodes. None of these have the immediate clout of Netflix’s biggest efforts to date, in terms of casting (Kevin Spacey in House of Cards) or an existing fanbase, as with Arrested Development, so it will be intriguing to see how popular they prove. With Amazon keeping viewing figures to itself for now, only further investment will give us some idea how the project is going.