While there are plenty of great reasons to go outside in the summer, sometimes, you’re looking to do a little bit of couch-surfing to escape the heat. Amazon Prime Video has plenty of great shows, but picking the one you want to watch can be a challenge.
We’ve picked 10 excellent shows that you can spend the summer enjoying, all of which differ from one another in both genre and length. Check out our recommendations below.
We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.
Game 7 (2024-)
There are great sports documentaries of all kinds, but Game 7 is remarkable for the way it combines different sports and different eras into a single narrative. The show chronicles game 7s from baseball, basketball, and hockey, chronicling moments when athletes understand that everything about their seasons, and perhaps even their legacies, comes down to a single game. T
No games in sports have higher stakes than game 7s. In a game 7, the teams are evenly matched and know that this final test will be nothing more than a battle of wills.
You can watch Game 7 on Amazon Prime Video.
The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-2025)
Adapted from a best-selling YA series of the same name, The Summer I Turned Pretty is a worthy addition to the teen rom-com canon. The show is initially set over the course of a single summer as a young woman finds herself caught in a love triangle between two brothers.
What this show is really about, though, is the delicate moment when young people begin to feel like adults for the first time and feel things with an intensity they might never experience again.
You can watch The Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon Prime Video.
The Boys (2019-)
A satirical superhero show that arrived at precisely the right moment, The Boys is set in a world where superheroes exist, but importantly, they also suck. The show splits its time between following these superheroes and following a ragtag group of regular people who are determined to take them down, even though they are hugely outmatched.
Along the way, The Boys has become a trenchant commentary on the nature of life in the 2020s, and while its view on things is pretty bleak, it can also be wildly entertaining.
You can watch The Boys on Amazon Prime Video.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2024-)
There are certainly plenty of spy shows on the market, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith manages to iterate on that familiar formula in interesting ways. The show follows two spies who sign up to work as private contractors for a company they don’t know much about.
They have to pretend to be married as part of the ruse. As the duo slowly grows closer together, they fall out of love with the job. Anchored by sensational performances from Maya Erskine and Donald Glover, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is sexy, adult, and surprisingly light on its feet.
You can watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Amazon Prime Video.
Fleabag (2016-2019)
One of the great TV shows of the past decade, Fleabag announced the arrival of a totally singular voice in Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The show, which is characterized by Waller-Bridge’s character using the camera as a confidant, lasted two seasons, but each was stunning in distinct ways.
The first follows her as she picks up the remnants of her life after a devastating loss, and the second follows her as she falls in love with a priest. A rich, textured show about a difficult person who wants to be better, Fleabag is hilarious and moving in equal measure.
You can watch Fleabag on Amazon Prime Video.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022-)
Although it’s been on the air for just two seasons, The Rings of Power has already managed to capture some of the magic of Tolkien’s universe. There are few shows on television that are told with this much sweep and scope, and Rings of Power also has a number of outstanding performers it can rely on regularly.
Set thousands of years before the events of the original trilogy, Rings of Power tells the story of Sauron’s rise and of the forging of the ring that will eventually become so central to the events of Lord of the Rings.
You can watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime Video.
The Terror (2018-2025)
An anthology horror series with two distinctly terrifying seasons, The Terror is a show that imbues real-life historical events with a greater degree of fictional terror. The first season tells the story of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage.
When the crew becomes stranded in the Arctic, they start to suspect they are being hunted. Subsequent seasons have taken inspiration from other real-world events, including Japanese internment, and this mix of historical fiction and horror makes for an appealing, excruciating watch.
You can watch The Terror on Amazon Prime Video.
Downton Abbey (2010-2015)
A remarkable upstairs-downstairs drama that features pretty much every British actor you’ve ever heard of, Downton Abbey follows one wealthy family and their staff as they navigate a world that is changing around them in the 1910s.
The series starts with the sinking of the Titanic, but follows this family through World War I and its aftermath as the very idea of an aristocratic nobility begins to crumble around them. Downton Abbey is a fascinating and compelling show that includes the joys of a soap opera.
You can watch Downton Abbey on Amazon Prime Video.
The Expanse (2015-2022)
Adapted from a series of novels, The Expanse tells the kind of sprawling sci-fi story that we rarely get on TV anymore. The show is set hundreds of years into the future, after mankind has colonized the solar system.
As tensions rise between Earth and Mars, a military power in its own right, a detective and a ship’s captain start looking for a missing girl. As they dive deeper into the mystery, they begin to realize that it hides something far more significant than the life of any one person.
You can watch The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video.
Jury Duty (2023-)
A unique experiment in the history of TV, Jury Duty is a comedy series about 12 people who find themselves summoned to jury duty. The trick, though, is that 11 of them know they’re being filmed, and the 12th believes that everything happening is real.
Over the course of several weeks, Ronald Gladden finds himself thrown into a series of absurd situations, and because he believes what’s happening to him is real, he acts accordingly. Jury Duty is hilarious, but the most surprising thing about it is how open-hearted and sweet its central character turns out to be.
You can watch Jury Duty on Amazon Prime Video.
