10 Best Prime Video TV Shows Of All Time, Ranked

By the time streaming became a serious, increasingly disruptive factor in the television business in the early-to-mid 2010s, it seemed as though no one could compete with Netflix. Hulu was … around, but it was mostly known for Super Bowl ads, and a few other companies were experimenting with platforms that looked and felt like overpriced YouTube alternatives (including YouTube itself). But no one was producing original media with the same level of cultural prestige as Netflix's "House of Cards" or "Orange is the New Black."

Then, Amazon Prime Video won its first Emmy Award in 2015. In the decade-plus since, the streaming wars have only gotten deadlier for the entertainment industry. Competition has led to consolidation and, thus, the streamlined corporate sloppification of media at large. And while Amazon has played its own role in this decline, it, at the very least, continues to produce quality series that — in some rare cases — keeps pushing the medium of television forward in the same way that streaming originals once promised. This potential is exemplified in large part by the 10 best Prime Video series of all time, ranked below.

In the early 2010s, Paramount set out to turn Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" novels into the next great action movie franchise. And while attaching Tom Cruise to star probably seemed like a no-brainer, that casting decision was partially responsible for the venture's muted impact. Hence, when Child began working with Amazon to make a "Reacher" TV show, no decision was as important as who would star.

The foundational achievement of "Reacher" was the casting of Alan Ritchson as the titular drifting antihero. As the Cruise movies learned, this property only works if its protagonist feels unstoppable on every possible level. But as hulking as Ritchson is as Reacher, he's also convincingly charismatic, charming, insightful, and cunning. In other words, his performance (working in tandem with equally solid scripting) makes Reacher a physical and psychological threat. At the same time, "Reacher" is self-aware and thrilling enough to keep his overwhelming force entertaining, rather than eye-roll-inducing.

As of the release of its third season in 2025 (which was reportedly the most successful season of a Prime Video series since "Fallout" Season 1), "Reacher" has continued to improve with each outing. Season 4 has yet to be released, yet Prime Video has already ordered a Season 5, as well as a spin-off series about Reacher's ally Frances Neagly (Maria Sten). By all accounts, "Reacher" is the biggest action thriller of the contemporary television era.

Amazon might not have the streaming presence it does without "Transparent." The series was released in 2014, the time when Americans at large were beginning to develop an awareness of trans people not as a fringe community, but as their celebrities (Laverne Cox became the first trans person to be nominated for an acting Emmy in 2014; Caitlyn Jenner came out in 2015), neighbors, friends, children, and, in some cases, parents.

Jeffrey Tambor — then widely known as the bumbling, backwards-thinking father from "Arrested Development" — won two Emmy Awards for portraying Maura Pfefferman, a trans woman who doesn't live as a woman or come out to her family until her 70s. That premise in and of itself was revolutionary for the time, especially as it was treated with exceptional nuance, empathy, and intimacy. (Creator Joey Soloway loosely based the series on their own experiences with their trans mother.) But it goes beyond merely inviting a mostly cis audience to see what life for a trans person in the circumstances would be like — in fact, it asks them to look inward as much as outward.

"Transparent" has a complicated legacy. Even putting aside the allegations surrounding Tambor's firing and the series' messy attempt to resolve its plot without him, its handling of trans issues now reads as deeply subjective or poorly aged, to mention nothing of its problematic casting of a cis actor as a trans character. It was, however, the show that got many audiences speaking seriously about trans issues for the first time. It also put Amazon on the map by becoming the first streaming show to win in the Best Series category at the Golden Globes.

"The Legend of Vox Machina" is the series every "Dungeons and Dragons" player secretly wishes they were writing. The animated fantasy adventure comedy is based on "Critical Role," a real, "actual-play" D&D campaign run by game master Matthew Mercer and players Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham — all established voice actors in their own right who have reunited to bring their characters back to life in a streamlined television adaptation.

The show's creative team (which included the original players and showrunner Brandon Auman) had a daunting challenge ahead of them at the start, needing to turn hundreds of hours of rolling and riffing into a coherent story. This actually seems to have given them a level of structural awareness and efficiency that most fantasy series lose sight of. The episodes feel breezy and rewarding because they're necessarily tight and bursting with as much action and comedy as they could reasonably mine from the original series. At the same time, they still find ways to claw toward the creative chaos of a real D&D campaign, capturing the spontaneity that made the original "Critical Role" feel like a magic trick audiences got to watch unravel in real time.

What began as a Kickstarter-funded special has since grown into one of the most successful and beloved animated series of the 2020s so far. It's also a rare instance of a streamer — or, really, any established Hollywood entity — championing a disruptive new media project without draining its vitality. "The Legend of Vox Machina" has been unanimously well-received throughout its run, and it's heading into its fourth season as of writing. A spin-off titled "The Mighty Nein" premiered in 2025 and was met with equal acclaim.

"Bait" is the most-recent series to make it onto this list. It's also the most in danger of getting lost in the endless stream of content audiences are inundated with every week. This 2026 meta miniseries satirizes the wild yet immediately recognizable drama that ignites with every high-profile casting process — in this case, the casting of the next James Bond. Creator and star Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling actor who botches the opportunity of a lifetime by fumbling his lines during a "Bond" screen test. Desperate for the success that would come with such a role and psychologically unsettled by his failure, he manages to orchestrate a scenario in which the press discover — and share to the masses — that he, a young British Pakistani actor, might be the next 007.

Tackling such a recent, recurring cultural issue head-on is a bold move by Ahmed, an actor who would be a plausible Bond candidate himself. His closeness to the issue at hand is undoubtedly what grants the series its complicated emotional texture. Yes, it's a show that very much explores the real backlash actors of color face for so much as being rumored to have auditioned for a coveted role. (It wasn't that long ago that Idris Elba admitted racists made him wary of pushing for his own Bond casting.) But "Bait" digs far deeper than a debate about color conscious casting or cultural acceptance vs. rejection. The drama is largely driven by Latif's flawed belief that this one role will change his life for the better, in conflict with his un-ignorable anxiety that Bond would force him into a position of moral and artistic compromise.

Amazon dumped all six episodes of "Bait" at once with little ceremony. Its awards potential remains to be seen.

To most readers, the strangest superhero satire on Amazon Prime Video is "The Boys." (It's certainly the second-most celebrated superhero series on the streamer and might've even made this list had it not stumbled in its final season.) But that's not technically true. In reality, the strangest and, indeed, the platform's most refreshing, original, and imaginative entry in this genre, is Boots Riley's surreal anti-capitalist miniseries "I'm a Virgo."

Admittedly (and to its credit), "I'm a Virgo" isn't a superhero series in the way you'd expect. Its hero, Jharrel Jerome's Cootie, isn't a crime-fighting killing machine; he's an otherwise normal 19-year-old who just so happens to be nearly twice as tall as Victor Wembanyama. When he comes out to the world as the extraordinary human being that he is, it gives way to novel explorations of Riley's favorite themes (seen in his movies "Sorry to Bother You" and the recent "I Love Boosters"). There are average people in his neighborhood who struggle to fully accept and understand him (even in their attempts to welcome him into their lives), and there are wealthy outsiders, who see him as a cultural commodity to be exploited or a potential threat to be neutralized. Walton Goggins even has a supporting role as an egotistical, Tony Stark-like billionaire vigilante who will have you wishing "The Boys" did half as much with Tek Knight.

Like "Bait," "I'm a Virgo" also points toward an exciting evolution in Amazon's media strategy. It doesn't aspire to be just another IP-museum — it wants to be a storytelling destination where serious, challenging writers and filmmakers are able to paint on a larger serialized canvas. Despite rave reviews, "I'm a Virgo" was overlooked by most major awards and remains one of Prime Video's most underrated shows.

Of course, at this point, the best superhero drama on the streamer — and, arguably, on any platform as of writing — is "Invincible." The animated series is a faithful adaptation of the comic book by creator/showrunner Robert Kirkman, who wrote the comics in the early 2000s at the same time he was writing "The Walking Dead." Impressively, despite Kirkman's intimate creative proximity to the source material and his control over its translation, he seems to be approaching the process with humility. How else would he be improving a story so dramatically decades after comic readers already praised it?

Given that Kirkman has the benefit of having finished the comic series long before penning the first episode, he predictably takes advantage of being able to set up certain faraway twists more effectively, trim or adjust characters and storylines fans reacted to negatively in the comics, and generally turn a lot of happy accidents into purposeful storytelling. However, more than all of that, it feels as though he's been able to look at the story with fresher, older eyes to find more complexity and human realism than he originally wrote. This humanity is skillfully conveyed through the performances of the exceptional voice cast, in particular Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, and J.K. Simmons, who voice the members of the Grayson family at the heart of the story. How they deal with the betrayal and attempted redemption of Simmons' Omni-Man has so far created one of the most compelling on-screen superhero narratives ever.

Season-to-season, "Invincible" consistently raises the stakes without losing sight of that level of character-driven storytelling. That's why it isn't just a stand-out superhero series, but an exemplar of contemporary adult animation as a genre.

As great as "Invincible" is, however, it's only the second-best animated series on Prime Video. Apparently unsatisfied with having created the best animated show on Netflix, Raphael Bob-Waksberg ("BoJack Horseman") made his mark on Amazon as well, co-creating the series "Undone" with Kate Purdy. Purdy, previously a writer on Bob-Waksberg's breakout show, wrote the script for the devastatingly trippy "Time's Arrow" in Season 4 — a useful note for "BoJack" fans who've yet to see "Undone," as the latter series borrows heavily from the unusual and unsettling stylistic choices made in that episode.

In "Undone," Rosa Salazar plays Alma, a disillusioned woman who develops the ability to communicate with her dead father (Bob Odenkirk) through time travel. As she agrees to undergo training to venture into the past (so that she can prevent her dad from being murdered), she finds herself slowly losing her grip on the emotions, relationships, and memories that keep her grounded in the present. Like "Time's Arrow," an appropriately unmoored approach to setting, time, and identity leaves the viewer to wrestle with how much they can actually trust Alma's perception of events — whether she's truly a time traveler, trying to make things right, or a normal woman letting go of reality to cope with how her life panned out.

Though it looks and feels nothing like the rest of "BoJack Horseman," "Undone" is every bit as smart, subversive, and existentially pensive. It's a credit to Amazon's stable of shows that "Undone" and "Invincible" exist alongside one another — and a credit to their respective creative teams that they can be enjoyed by the same discerning audience.

Roughly two years after "Transparent" won various Golden Globes and Emmy Awards, thereby announcing Amazon as a serious platform for prestige television, the streamer made its biggest bet: a woman-led period dramedy from the creator of "Gilmore Girls" titled "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." In April of 2017, Amy Sherman-Palladino's project was the first Amazon series to secure a multi-season order. A year later, after the first season shone through the post-#MeToo malaise to show Hollywood what they could be at their best, it became the first streaming series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.

That a show about a self-possessed young woman (Rachel Brosnahan) breaking into the entertainment industry by being tenacious, exceptionally talented, and persevering through prejudice was able to meet the cultural moment so perfectly is only part of the story. The reason why "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" continues to resonate (even sticking the landing in Season 5) is that it manages to be as singularly funny, charming, and intelligent as it wants its protagonist to be. Readers can probably count on one hand the number of industry dramas that accomplish this feat. For sure, you find yourself not only entranced by Midge, but everyone in her life. Likewise, the storylines involving her manager (Alex Borstein) and father (Tony Shalhoub) quickly become just as crucial to the series' overall appeal. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is an entire world unto itself — a magnum opus for the prolific Sherman-Palladino that has yet to be outdone by any traditional comedy on the streamer since.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. An Academy Award-winning director. 10 episodes of the greatest television you've probably never seen.

"The Underground Railroad" is the pinnacle of the kind of creative direction we touched upon with "Bait" and "I'm a Virgo," with Barry Jenkins ("Moonlight," "If Beale Street Could Talk") turning Colson Whitehead's 2016 book into a miniseries that debuted on the streamer in 2021. Thuso Mbedu ("The Woman King") stars as Cora, an enslaved woman in the Antebellum South who flees her captors through a literal railway system underneath the ground. Throughout her journey, she is pursued by a sociopathic bounty hunter (played by Joel Edgerton).

Amazon's questionable decision to drop the entire series at once (with each episode having been carefully crafted with Jenkins himself in the director's chair) prevented it from becoming the cultural event it should've been. Jenkins proves his style transcends mediums, giving every episode the cinematic visual scale of a theatrical film without getting lost in the slog of the dreaded "10-hour movie" so many miniseries directors disappear into. Week-to-week, the combined strength of the writing and directing would've allowed "The Underground Railroad" to be appointment viewing (or whatever appointment viewing is in the streaming era).

The only "good" thing about Amazon burying it is that you, the reader, can experience one of the greatest TV epics of the 21st Century for the first time. "The Underground Railroad" is what happens when a generational filmmaker is given a great American story, a prestige budget, and the creative control to turn it all into something truly unique.

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and "Fleabag" may both technically be "comedies," but you'd be hard pressed to find two more different shows on Amazon right now. One finds humor in the struggle to become better than the world believes we can be; the other finds it in the tragedy of finally being seen for who you are.

In two short seasons, the latter show explores the cost of intimacy (in all its messy, beautiful forms) with more depth and complexity than any other series. "Fleabag" is the standard bearer for such tragicomedies that ask the viewer to empathize with someone essentially doing everything wrong, not simply because we hope they'll become "better," but because we can recognize parts of them within parts of ourselves. The series doesn't encourage the audience to absolve the titular character (played by creator/writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge), but it does ask you to watch as she behaves the only way she knows how. It's the kind of series that gets to the heart of what drama should be: an exercise in radical empathy.

"Fleabag" blew the doors open on what a prestige TV comedy could (or even should) do in the streaming era and pushed the envelope in terms of what we could stomach from a protagonist in this context. Amazon has produced plenty of shows with larger budgets, episode counts, and even cultural footprints than "Fleabag," but none of them have meant as much to the medium of television.