15 Most Underrated Prime Video Shows Of All Time, Ranked

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In the nonstop flow of watching and discussing new TV that has been the mark of the streaming era, Prime Video is sometimes underdiscussed as one of said era's most consistent and dependable hubs for quality programming. As the most unsung great Prime Video shows prove, the streamer has a deep vault of strong original productions that have all but slipped though the cracks of mainstream pop culture.

Below, you'll find a list of the 15 most underrated Prime Video original shows ever, ranked in proportion to the discrepancy between their merits and the scale of their popularity and renown. Some of the very best Prime Video shows are here, even if you haven't heard much about them.

Created by Joey Soloway of "Transparent" fame and Sarah Gubbins, "I Love Dick" adapts the eponymous, loosely autofictional epistolary novel by Chris Kraus. Kathryn Hahn stars as Chris, a film director and artist in an unfulfilling marriage to Holocaust scholar Sylvère (Griffin Dunne). While accompanying Sylvère on an academic trip to Marfa, Texas, she becomes fascinated by Sylverè's fellowship sponsor Dick (Kevin Bacon), and begins writing a series of unsent letters to him containing tell-all reveries and elaborate sexual fantasies — a process that ignites a new spark in her life and, ironically, her marriage.

Brilliantly acted by Bacon, Dunne, and most of all the always excellent Hahn, and featuring gorgeous direction by the likes of Andrea Arnold and Kimberly Peirce, "I Love Dick" is a frank, funny exploration of lust in the Texas dust that finds Soloway once again taking a deep dive into the complexities of modern adult relationships, in ways both hilarious and disarmingly emotional. The show didn't quite manage to find a wide audience and got canceled after a single eight-episode batch, but those eight episodes are plenty rewarding TV on their own.

Developed by Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights," "Parenthood"), "As We See It" follows Jack Hoffman (Rick Glassman), Harrison Dietrich (Albert Rutecki), and Violet Wu (Sue Ann Plen), three twentysomething roommates in Los Angeles who are all on the autism spectrum. With help from their friend and live-in aide Mandy (Sosie Bacon), Jack, Harrison, and Violet take tentative steps towards independence, tackling new challenges day by day in an effort to make the best of a world that offers scarce accommodation or support to neurodivergent people.

In addition to the representational breakthrough it represented in depicting the daily lives of autistic adults from a first-person perspective, with full candor and genuine identification rather than the outside-looking-in slant of most mainstream media about people on the spectrum, "As We See It" boasts writing, acting, and storytelling on the same level of unassuming excellence of Katims' previous shows about the lives of ordinary folks. Unlike those shows, however, "As We See It" wasn't the hit it deserved to be; despite critical acclaim for its single season, it went down as one of the most unjust cancellations of 2022.

Spun off from "Bosch" and similarly adapted from a novel series by Michael Connelly, "Ballard" stars Maggie Q as her "Bosch: Legacy" Season 3 character Renée Ballard, whom the show finds as she's tasked with heading the new, volunteer-based cold case unit of the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division. Turning her attention to unsolved cases and their ostensible investigative dead ends, Ballard happens upon a vast criminal conspiracy that implicates even members of her own police force, and must balance her daily obligations as a detective and unit leader with her dangerous yet dogged pursuit of the truth.

Spearheaded by a typically fantastic effort from Maggie Q, "Ballard" is every bit the equal of "Bosch" when it comes to gritty, grounded, intelligently twisty procedural drama; though it's fortunately been renewed for Season 2, it deserves to reach the same level of rarefied popularity as its parent show — which one needn't really have watched in order to follow along with Detective Ballard's tension-filled dive into the Los Angeles underbelly, though the character groundwork laid out by "Bosch: Legacy" certainly makes her Season 1 arc even richer. Indeed, character work is the main strength of "Ballard," a show on which every player big or small manages to make a striking impression.

The Janice Y. K. Lee novel "The Expatriates" got a screen adaptation in 2024 via the Prime Video miniseries "Expats," created and entirely directed by acclaimed "The Farewell" filmmaker Lulu Wang. Nicole Kidman, Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo play Margaret, Hillary, and Mercy, three American women from different backgrounds who are part of the same community of expatriates living in Hong Kong. Due to a series of events surrounding the disappearance of Margaret's three-year-old son Gus (Connor James), the three protagonists and their families become entangled in a web of intrigue that keeps getting more and more complicated with each passing episode.

Helmed by Wang with incredible, relentlessly inquisitive sensitivity and an impeccable command of a tricky tonal space, "Expats" strikes a perfect balance between gloomy, spiky domestic melodrama and carefully-woven suspense. The questions it poses and the points it makes about the nature of fulfillment, the strain placed by grief and trauma on human relations, and the delicate interplay between wealth, race, and nationality in expatriate communities won't soon be forgotten by anyone who watches it. Even so, back in 2024, it was somewhat pigeonholed as an also-ran in the pantheon of recent Nicole Kidman prestige TV work, and didn't get anywhere near the attention it should have.

Nicolas Winding Refn directs the entirety of "Too Old to Die Young," a 2019 miniseries co-created by him and prolific comic book writer Ed Brubaker. The highly-stylized show follows the violent mayhem that unspools when police officer Martin Jones (Miles Teller) gets involved with the Los Angeles criminal world, leading to a series of altercations between eccentric and volatile characters.

Refn has always been a divisive filmmaker even at his most accessible, and "Too Old to Die Young" may just be his most abrasively Refn-esque work: 13 hours of glacially-paced liminal anomie in neon-drenched dollhouses, following a host of (mostly) unsympathetic characters as they rain destruction on themselves and each other, punctuated by eruptions of ugly brutality and Cliff Martinez's heaviest-ever synth score. Unsurprisingly, the series split critics and audiences, with many deeming it unbearable. But, if you're partial to Refn's way of expressing existential anguish and alienation through dazzling imagery and entrancingly stilted rhythms, "Too Old to Die Young" is a hypnotic, affecting, and unforgettable experience.

The partly autobiographical comedy series "Overcompensating" was created by Benito Skinner and stars himself as Benny Scanlon, a former high school football star now acclimating to freshman life in the fictional Yates University. Unable to come to terms with the fact that he's gay, Benny is used to engaging in the behavior that gives the show its title, and participating in various shows of ostentatious masculinity to avoid raising suspicion in his social circle. Things begin to change when he befriends fellow freshman Carmen (Wally Baram), a former high school outcast who encourages Benny to break out of his shell.

In keeping with Skinner's beginnings as an internet comedy sensation, "Overcompensating" has a frantic, surreal, over-the-top sense of humor that brilliantly updates the raunchy stylings of the campus comedy for the TikTok generation. What really makes the show special, though, is the earnest and irresistibly sweet story of self-discovery underlying the jamboree, which allows both Skinner and Baram to prove their mettle as comedic and dramatic stars. The first season was well-liked and Season 2 is already on the way, but here's hoping the show eventually becomes the full-fledged phenomenon it has all the juice to be.

"With Love" was created by Gloria Calderón Kellett as her follow-up to "One Day at a Time." Aired on Prime Video for two short seasons, the series looks at modern love through the eyes of siblings Lily (Emeraude Toubia) and Jorge (Mark Indelicato), with each episode of Season 1 taking stock of their romantic lives and vibrant family dynamic during a different holiday over the course of a year, while the second season expands the concept to also include life-milestone parties including a climactic wedding.

The series' smart, breezy concept allows it to infuse years' worth of careful dramatic plotting with a continuous sense of holiday cheer, and to capture Lily and Jorge's lives always at their most momentous and engaging. Led by Kellett, the writing team weaves a delightful tapestry of love and exasperation that achieves feel-good bliss without ever shortchanging its own timely humor and emotional complexity. Even at just its 11 existing episodes, it's a show that feels like a journey.

Helmed by DC maestro and animation legend Bruce Timm, "Batman: Caped Crusader" revisits the mythology laid out by the early Batman comics of the mid-20th century. Depicted here in the early days of his crimefighting career, the character is re-envisioned as an archetypal film noir brooding hero in the Gotham City of the 1940s, alongside period-appropriate versions of several other iconic figures in the Batman universe — all of whom fit into the era like a glove.

"Batman: Caped Crusader" takes its interest in the characters' psychological layers even further than Timm's previous works, fashioning a version of Batman (Hamish Linklater) so intellectually and emotionally vivid in the narrative's present that there's scarcely any need to retread the same old backstory checkmarks. Like the best noir flicks, each episode is a tightly-wound whodunit given flair and depth by the tragic richness and zippy wit of the participants. It's downright odd that it didn't make as much of a splash as other "Batman" shows and movies.

Meagan Good, Grace Byers, Jerrie Johnson, and Shoniqua Shandai star on "Harlem," a comedy series created by "Girls Trip" co-screenwriter Tracy Oliver. The series follows in the long tradition of female-friend-group sitcoms like "Living Single," "Sex and the City," and "Girlfriends," and charts the ups and downs of four women who met as NYU students and remain best friends into their 30s, now balancing the challenges of love and companionship with bustling careers while trying to remain true to themselves.

With Good, Byers, Johnson, and Shandai locked into an irreproachable ensemble chemistry that effortlessly evokes real, messy, loving friendship in every moment, "Harlem" is the kind of show that could coast by on the strength of its cast alone. And yet it's so smart about mining the challenges of millennial adulthood for laughs, sentiment, and relatable conflict that it feels almost like a flex. In a fairer world, we'd have had much more than three seasons to spend time with these women and watch them suss out their paths in life; be that as it may, the 24 episodes we do have are a gift.

When the Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard-created "Forever" begins, June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar Hoffman (Fred Armisen) have long since settled into a marriage routine that satisfies Oscar, but leaves June distressed and yearning for more out of life. On the first episode, at June's insistence, they take a mountain trip instead of their typical lake house vacation, and Oscar dies in a skiing accident; the following episode jumps forward a year, and finds the widowed June slowly breaking out of her guilt-ridden depression — only to die herself choking on a macadamia nut, and meet Oscar in a placid, eerily tranquil afterlife community.

"Forever" imagines the world beyond as a site of gnawing humdrum frustration: June and Oscar can resume their life together, and have a whole host of friendly neighbors to help them acclimate to this new realm, but their existence is still all too human — and, as such, still haunted by the same unresolved grievances that marked their marriage while alive. Mixing oddball supernatural humor with a truly knockout arc of philosophical actualization for June, the series manages to be both quaintly hilarious and indescribably affecting, and gives Rudolph a rare opportunity to show how incredible she is at drama. Would that we'd gotten another season.

Written by Shaun Grant and directed by Justin Kurzel, Prime Video's 2025 miniseries take on Richard Flanagan's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" enlists a formidable cast of Australian stars — including Jacob Elordi, Olivia DeJonge, Odessa Young, Essie Davis, Heather Mitchell, and Simon Baker — to bring to life the (fictional) tale of Dorrigo Evans (Elordi and later Ciarán Hinds), an Australian World War II war doctor who survives several years as a Japanese labor camp prisoner, and then goes on to build a sterling career as a surgeon while being haunted by the trauma of what he endured in the war.

Split into three different timelines, the show intercuts Dorrigo's preparations for the war and his affair with his uncle's wife Amy Mulvaney (Young) in 1940, his experiences in the POW camp in 1942, and his regret-filled married life with Ella (Mitchell) in 1989. These three threads converge to tell a complete, sweeping, and utterly heart-wrenching story about the toll of war and the implacability of time, featuring some of the most handsome production and direction in Prime Video history. Yet, despite its starry ensemble, the series remains criminally little-known outside of Australia.

Generational talents Tig Notaro and Diablo Cody teamed up in 2015 as the creators of "One Mississippi," an emotionally charged comedy-drama series about Los Angeles radio host Tig Bavaro (Notaro). Returning to her hometown of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to accompany her dying mother Caroline in her final days, Tig makes the decision to stick around for a while following Caroline's passing, and begins a journey of investigation into her mother's past while pondering her professional future, her relationship with girlfriend Brooke (Casey Wilson), and her own struggle with breast cancer and C. difficile.

Much like Notaro's legendarily candid and emotionally intense stand-up, "One Mississippi" is a show that manages to find droll humor in the horror of everyday life, and vice-versa. Kept at a nimble, gently captivating clip by its creator-star's supernatural ability to impart even the most grueling narrative content with warmth and generosity, the series dispenses myriad life lessons to its characters as well as to the viewer, without ever letting up on the precision-strike dry humor or the eagle-eyed social observation. Widely-known or not, it should be remembered as one of the best dramedies of the 2010s.

Created by Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady, the animated sitcom "#1 Happy Family USA" follows the daily life of the Husseins, an Egyptian-American New Jersey family balancing differing ideas about how to deal with a deeply Islamophobic cultural landscape in the years following 9/11. Dad Hussein (Youssef) is committed to assimilating via performative displays of patriotism, mom Sharia (Salma Hindy) makes a point of wearing her Muslim identity on her sleeve, older daughter Mona (Alia Shawkat) pursues lofty academic ambitions while hiding the fact that she's a lesbian, and 12-year-old son Rumi (Youssef) is just trying to survive being a teenage boy.

Critics gave due credit to the hilarity and trenchant intelligence of "#1 Happy Family USA," praising the use of narrative and visual absurdity as a conduit for absurd times that made it one of the best A24 shows of all time. Yet, despite its satirical brilliance, and the straightforward appeal it should have as a rock-solid cartoon family sitcom full of strong punchlines, wild swings, and memorable characters, the show remains hugely underrated within the adult animation landscape.

Dazzlingly animated via rotoscoping, the Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg-created "Undone" stars Rosa Salazar as Alma Winograd-Diaz, a young woman dealing with deep dissatisfaction in her life. Following a near-fatal car crash, Alma awakens to find that she now possesses the supernatural ability to bend time and cut through it at will; as she learns to control and make sense of her new power, Alma is driven to use it to uncover the truth about the death of her father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk), and soon sees her life spiral into a flurry of reality-melting chaos.

This phenomenal postmodern thriller has become something of a cult item in the years since its 2019-2022 airing, but that's still not quite on par with its level of accomplishment; it ought to be discussed as one of the 21st century's best animated series and best sci-fi series in any medium. Led by Salazar's fantastic, frayed-yet-commanding lead performance, it's a show that makes brilliant use of time pretzels, surreal segues, and mind-blowing twists to get across every aching nuance in a first-rate story about family, grief, perception, and purpose.

Developed by acclaimed British playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch, the 2023 "Dead Ringers" miniseries puts a different spin on the eponymous 1988 David Cronenberg film, itself based on the 1977 novel "Twins" by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, which in turn took inspiration from the real-life story of twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. Elliot and Beverly Mantle, the fictionalized characters originally played by Jeremy Irons in the movie, here get a gender-swapped version brought to life by Rachel Weisz, while retaining their names and their penchant for bone-chilling manipulation.

With its fresh, carefully-considered perspective on the Mantles, "Dead Ringers" burrows just as deep as its source material into rattling questions about identity, agency, consent, and relationship power differentials, while homing in even more tightly on the matter of women's bodily autonomy that subtextually charged the 1988 movie. Dismissed out of hand by some at the time as another pointless streaming-age reboot, the show is actually a bona fide masterwork of twisted psychological drama — one that honors Cronenberg's eye for the taboo-breaking grotesque, while adding brand new layers of horror and queasiness linked directly to its female POV. And Rachel Weisz may just give the performance of her career on it — which is saying a lot.