Today, Amazon Studios announced the renewal of one of its most critically-acclaimed original programs, but that wasn’t its only reveal. It also announced its decision to pick up five new series, all of which premiered during its most recent round of competing pilots.
Typically, Amazon has been more conservative in terms of the number of series it green-lights out of its pilot presentations, but in its latest round, only one of its six pilots–a western called Edge–has not yet received the green light. The others will all go to series, and their combined presence will dramatically increase the size of Amazon’s original content library.
Four of the five series Amazon picked up returned an average rating of at least four stars out of five from viewers. Good Girls Revolt, which follows a group of female researchers in 1969, and Z, which stars Christina Ricci as Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, received the most acclaim from viewers. Highston, about a boy and his imaginary friends, and One Mississippi, which is loosely based off the life of comedienne Tig Notaro, followed closely behind. Political dramedy Patriot received an average rating of 3.9. Edge received the worst reception among the six pilots, which lends credence to the idea that Amazon is actually listening to the feedback it gets from its viewers.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
No release dates have been announced for any of the five upcoming series, though they will join returning titles like Man in the High Castle, Mad Dogs, and Red Oaks as well as several programs for children. Clearly, Amazon is committed to a huge amount of growth in its original video department; it will need to crank out high-quality television if it hopes to keep up with Netflix.
