Amazon Studios at TCA: Hot Shows, "Cool" Execs

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Amazon Studios delivered a memorable presentation yesterday for a number of reasons – not all of them good – at the Summer 2015 Television Critics Association tour. On the upside: It offered five lively panels for compelling new and returning programs the likes of which prove just how far Amazon has come in the streaming content arena in a relatively short time. Collectively, its shows were perhaps the most interesting seen at this tour so far and will probably retain that distinction by the time it ends later next week. On the downside: When they spoke, Amazon Prime’s top executives seemed strangely unrehearsed for actual questions about some of their shows. Worse, Amazon started its presentation a full half hour later than planned and continued it well beyond its arranged end time – a TCA taboo which in this case put Amazon in conflict with a special TCA event planned by 20th Century Fox Television.

First the good news: Amazon did a fine job showcasing five of its series, including the returning critical sensation “Transparent” (pictured below) and the little seen charmer “Mozart in the Jungle,” which will hopefully gain some traction with the media and with viewers when its second season debuts in January 2016. It even stoked interest in two possible future shows: “Sneaky Pete,” created by David Shore and Bryan Cranston and starring Giovanni Ribisi and Margo Martindale and “Casnaova,” starring Diego Luna.

The three new shows it presented were “Hand of God,” an intense psychological drama about a judge who suffers a breakdown, falls under the influence of a shady preacher and believes that he can communicate with the Almighty, starring Ron Perlman and Dana Delany; “The Man in the High Castle,” an alternate-reality thriller set in a version of 1960s America after Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the second World War, starring Rufus Sewell, and “Red Oaks,” a dramedy set in 1985 at a country club in New Jersey, which one of its stars, Jennifer Grey (pictured below left), described to critics as what might be produced if “‘Caddyshack’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’ had a baby and it was raised by John Cassavetes.’"

Ed Martin

Ed Martin is the chief television and content critic for MediaVillage.  He has written about television and internet programming for several Myers publications since 2000, including The Myers Report, The Myers Programming Report, MediaBizBloggers a… read more