Amazon offers pilots for viewer votes and pleasure
Contrary to what some people may be thinking of late, democracy is still alive and well, at least on Amazon, which is asking viewers to take a look at five pilots for development as the streaming site’s next original series. The five shows are available on Amazon as of Friday, March 17.
The best of the bunch is “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” from “Gilmore Girls” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. The hour-long comedy-drama is set in 1958. “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) has married the man of her dreams, Joel Maisel (Michael Zegen), who works as a business exec during the day, but at night, heads to the Village to do stand-up at the ’50s equivalent of open-mike night.
Long story short, Joel is a flop; he can’t write jokes and is only good at stealing Bob Newhart’s famous routine about a press agent on the phone with Abraham Lincoln before the Gettysburg Address.
Other things happen, and before you know it, Midge is proving the real comedic talent in the family.
The period details are convincing, the performances by Brosnahan, Zegen, the inimitable Alex Borstein as the club manager Suzie, and Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle as Midge’s upwardly mobile parents are solid and, of course, Sherman-Palladino’s writing is spot on. “Oasis” stands a decent chance of getting picked up as well, thanks to its exploration of a dominant theme of science fiction, the dystopian future. Richard Madden plays a chaplain who is among a group of people sent into space to establish a new place for humans to live on another planet. The show is based on the cult novel “The Book of Strange New Things,” by Michel Faber, and presents a convincing if intentionally uninviting view of the future, where Patsy Cline music is pumped in on a continuous loop.
“Budding Prospects,” from Terry Zwigoff, takes us back to the glory days of the pre-legalization past as three misfits who have been eking out some kind of living in the Mission head to Mendocino to grow weed. It’s all set in 1983, although some of the period details seem to have been imported from the present. The cast includes Adam Rose, Joel David Moore, Will Sasso and the great Bret Gelman. There’s something here, for sure.
“The Legend of Master Legend” is an odd duck about a scrawny nut job who lives in Vegas and calls himself Master Legend, a superhero. Frank Lafount (John Hawkes) is anything but heroic, but he means well. The show could either be a hard sell, or, depending on how much Mendocino product you might be inhaling, a dark horse hit.
“The New V.I.P.’s” is the network’s first adult animated comedy and focuses on a group of workers who accidentally kill their boss and take over the company. The voice talent includes Matt Braunger, Ben Schwartz, Missi Pyle and Jonathan Adams. The show was created by Steve Dildarian, who created the HBO cult hit “The Life and Times of Tim” back in the day.
Once you’ve seen the shows, you may vote for your favorites online. Among the offerings in past Amazon pilot seasons were “Transparent,” “Mozart in the Jungle” and “The Man in the High Castle.”