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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party content is terrible.

Clarkson's Farm is legitimately good. It's worth checking out.

I'll second this. It also helped me to humanize Jeremy Clarkson as more than just an old oaf.

The moment at the end of the first season when they're totaling up his profit for the year. It is delicious. Top 10 TV moments, when the realization of what he's doing washes across his face.

He's a really good actor. He obviously knew his farm was losing money before that scene.

I'd like to see a fairer accounting, amortizing the equipment costs instead of incurring them all in full on year one.

The Boys/Invincible are generally at the top of the Most Watched lists on Prime when they release new episodes.

same here and there's a few non "shipping time" bonuses I remember hearing about and noting that I wanted to try... but then never did, I wonder if I should cut them off because I really dont mind just "acquiring" those shows otherwise if I want to watch them

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is good, brand new, and seems critically well-liked. Their general catalog is about as good as, if not better than, Netflix, even if their original content isn't. The Ad-free subscription for Prime Video doesn't cost enough for me to care about.

The Boys is great, but I can't really say there's anything else that I'm excited about

Invincible, Reacher, Terminal List and Jack Ryan are all pretty good as well.

The Expanse was fantastic (although checking now it started on Syfy for first 3 series).

There is a network that has consistently shot themselves in the foot, and refuses to understand it. The number of great shows that started on SyFy (and some from Showtime that moved to SyFy and then moved on) is incredible but they all end the same, abruptly cancelled because they didn't get the ratings that WWE would get.

They’ve had a few. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was fantastic. So was Sneaky Pete with Giovanni Ribisi. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be well-known.

I don’t really know much else they’ve done, besides the man in the high castle. I just don’t hear about them much, and the fact that I find their app rather obnoxious means I don’t go looking in there very often.

As soon as they announced they were adding ads I deleted the app off all my devices. I basically never use it anyway, and now I definitely don’t want to. And clearly I don’t like it well enough to pay to remove the ads.

Honestly I wish the government would somehow break up prime. I’m happy to pay for shipping but I basically don’t want a single other benefit.

My two favorite hidden gems are Patriot and ZeroZeroZero. They also did Outer Range, A Hero (movie), Red Oaks, Good Omens, and Mozart in the Jungle.

The Boys and Invincible are both excellent, but more “mainstream” shows.

Jack Ryan and Reacher are pretty good.

Reacher's first season was good. Second season turned into a bad action movie. Bad writing, little time spent on characters/development while adding six new characters we were given no reason to know or care about.

It is legitimately too bad, they really had something with S1.

Reacher is based on the books. The ‘new’ characters were in the book (they were part of Reacher’s team and were being killed off).

That is very authentic to the books.

eh, both had great 1st season and then they were terrible in the following seasons.

"Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn. Its moral turpitude is only exceeded by the risible "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" that somehow wants me to like protagonists who kill and hurt strangers without any justification. I've loved everything Donald Glover was in, until now. Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn that utterly disrespects everything Tolkien made. Above all, Amazon's blatant anti-labor practices and monopolistic size makes it an important company to avoid. There are many smaller, better companies that specialize in different markets and offer better deals and support, and if they do err at least they will do so at a much smaller scale (personally I like alibris for books, discogs for music, b&h photo for electronics, the local dollar store for supplies like toothpaste and detergent, and the local thrift store for everything else).

In the books, Reacher was violent when he needed to be. The author made him ‘huge/large’ and his size enabled his act of violence/ability to mete out justice to the bad guys. Reacher’s size in the books is why folks complained when Tom Cruise starred as Reacher in the movies

> "Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn.

> Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn

You are aware not everything needs to be political, right? Sometimes bad television is just bad television...

I think it's an accurate description that successfully conveys the manipulative, puerile, and harmful nature of these shows in a compact way. My description isn't political in the "right vs left" sense although I admit it may be political in the "extremism vs moderate" sense. Personally, I think that the information we consume cannot help but shape our world-view, so identifying how it shapes our world-view is valid criticism. Reacher and Galadriel are, in my view, icons of their respective flavors of extremism, and I think Amazon does poorly to produce such content.

Have you actually watched Reacher? There is no politics in it at all. It's reminiscent of poorly written 80's action flicks, disguised as a noir mystery.

Again, sometimes bad television is simply bad television. Not everything needs political coloring.

"Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder" is an inherently political framework for a story. It is as politically tainted as the old show "24", where any and all ethical frameworks were shredded on the altar of the ticking bomb scenario.

Please explain the politics of "Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder". Specifically, what is the political message being pushed?

That the maintenance of the rule of law requires One True Man to stand outside the law and protect us through extrajudicial killing and torture. It is a statement on the core concept of law and justice.

Ok, and what are the politics of that statement, if any?

You seem to have some definition of politics that differs from the one I use. Politics is discourse and debate about the form of government and the exercise of power. As such, the political statement of "Reacher" or "24" is exactly what I described above: the implication that it is necessary to have someone who breaks all the laws, in order to maintain the system of laws.

Note that in the past we have had pop culture artifacts that argue the opposite, that stand for the triumph of the rule of law over individuals who arrogate extrajudicial powers to themselves. "A Few Good Men" was such a statement.

The app sucks, the way they present content sucks.

There was a series on prime called Mammals that remains seared into my brain. I have no idea why I started watching it, or why, because nothing about the show is my taste. By the end I was oh so glad I did... I have yet to find someone else who has seen it.

Turns out gobbling up IP and hitting the print button isn't such a great business model.

Also see: Disney.

See also every television/cable network ever. Every season a few shows would rise to the top and a few would get put out of the misery, you just move on and hope the good bets make more money than the bad bets burn.

I don't get why this would be an issue for Prime. They don't have to fill up a schedule so they can sell ad slots. They can make as little or as much content as they want. They don't need to make a "Veronica's Closet" to cram in between "Seinfeld" and "ER".

Because you still can't know how a show will turn out when you buy it.

You are often buying a show based on some scripts or based on a pilot. Pilots are, generally, not a good representation of what a show can be. Often they can be weak because the actors and writers still haven't found character voice etc.

With rings of power they bought some licenses for an IP THEN made a show... at that point you have a significant sunk cost and there is pressure to get SOMETHING made.

Maybe some of the actors are weak on the show, maybe the show just looks bad once you get it, maybe qualitywise it's fine but it just doesn't click with audiences.

Disagree. The Boys is the most fun I've had with video entertainment all year.

And I like The Expanse better than I like most sci fi. (And it's the only one I know of that actually cares about portraying space travel true to physics.)

This is not even remotely true.

Patriot is amazing.

Patriot rules, and is criminally under-watched. True facts: I watched the first season of that show without realizing that my sister-in-law is in it, until she shows up in like episode 2 (and through the rest of the season). An extremely WTF moment, I recommend everybody have it on some kind of show.

There is no accounting for taste of course, but this show appears to have a 35% dislike vote fraction among Google users and 68% favorable on Metacritic. Which puts it objectively well below other Prime shows that I personally think are extremely bad, such as Reacher and Jack Ryan.

Patriot is amazing. One of the best black comedys ever made.

>This is not even remotely true.

It's a subjective opinion, therefore entirely true to OP and not even remotely true to you.

Also 'The Boys' is quite popular, 'Bosch' and 'Reacher' are very popular.. there are a few others that do well. If you are old enough think back to the haydays of the network television evening programming. There were hits, there were misses, there was tons of stuff in between. For every 'Friends' there is a 'Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place'.

2GGPP launched Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillian and Susan Cryer from Silicon Valley. It’s a bit of a gem in its own way

... but it didn't do well overall.

For every “Friends” there are thousands of ‘Two guys a girl and a pizza’

Another vote for Patriot here. I think it flew under the radar due to the poor choice of title, but it's just so ridiculously good. Darkly hilarious writing and a really solid cast.

It's funny how Michael Chernus keeps playing brother roles ("Cool Rick" on Patriot, Cal on Orange is the New Black) or brother-in-law (Ricken on Severance). Dude just has a real brotherly vibe, perfect choice for this show.

And then separately it's kind of weird to think that Patriot's showrunner's real-life brother is an actor in the show (playing Dennis), considering some of the scenes that character is in...

I had such high hopes for Wheel of Time..

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