English Entertainment
Amazon Studios announced six new Amazon Original series for Prime Instant Video
MUMBAI: Amazon Studios announced on 31 March that The After, Bosch, Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, Mozart in the Jungle, Transparent and Wishenpoof! will become the next Amazon Original Series following rave customer reviews of the pilot episodes. The apocalypse, a behind-the-curtains look at classical music, a no-nonsense Los Angeles police detective standing trial, a family full of secrets, a girl with magic wishes and a boy named Gortimer—these are the intriguing plotlines of the six brand-new original series coming exclusively to Prime Instant Video.
“We had a tremendous response to Amazon Studios’ latest pilots – in fact, double the number of customers watched these pilots compared to our first season and they posted thousands of heartfelt reviews with pleas for us to continue these shows,” said Amazon Studio director Roy Price in a statement. “Now the fun really begins – Amazon will be working with some of the most talented casts and creators in the business to bring six new shows exclusively to tens of millions of Prime members worldwide. These series, along with our summer kids programming, will give customers a lot of viewing choices.”
Among the new Amazon Originals are, two hour-long dramas. The After from Chris Carter, the legendary creator The X-Files follows eight strangers who are thrown together by mysterious forces and must help each other survive in a violent world that defies explanation. Aldis Hodge, Andrew Howard, Arielle Kebbel, Jamie Kennedy, Sharon Lawrence, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Adrian Pasdar and Louise Monot will be returning to star in their roles.
Michael Connelly’s best-selling book series about a relentless LAPD homicide detective will also come to life in the Amazon Original series Bosch. Connelly and Eric Overmyer (The Wire) will co-write the series which features Titus Welliver, Annie Wersching and Jamie Hector. Henrik Bastin and Fabrik Entertainment (The Killing) are producing.
Amazon will also add Mozart in the Jungle, a half hour comedic drama about sex, drugs and classical music, that shows what happens behind the curtains can be just as captivating as what happens on stage. Returning cast includes Gael Garcia Bernal, Saffron Burrows, Lola Kirke, Malcolm McDowell, Bernadette Peters and Peter Vack. The series will be written by Oscar-nominee Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom), actor and musician Jason Schwartzman (The Darjeeling Limited), Tony-nominated writer and director Alex Timbers, and Oscar-nominee Paul Weitz.
Transparent, a dramedy about a Los Angeles family with serious boundary issues, rounds out Amazon’s upcoming prime time lineup. From Emmy nominee Jill Soloway (Six Feet Under) and starring returning cast Jeffrey Tambor, Judith Light, Gaby Hoffmann, Amy Landecker and Jay Duplass, Transparent is an exploration of sex, gender and family that begins when a dramatic admission causes everyone’s secrets to spill out. The pilot received wide critical acclaim, was hailed as “the best pilot I’ve seen in years,” and named to numerous must see lists.
In addition to its original prime time series, Amazon is developing children’s programming for preschoolers and for kids ages 6-11 that will not only entertain, but will also educate, inspire creativity and teach valuable lessons. Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street is a live action series for ages 6-11 and will be joined by Wishenpoof!, for preschoolers.
Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street is a live-action adventure show created by David Anaxagoras, a pre-school teacher and first-time writer who was discovered through Amazon Studios’ open-door submission process. The series is a coming-of-age tale that centers around Gortimer, his two best friends Ranger and Mel, and their exploits on Normal Street – an ordinary suburban neighborhood that has a hint of something magical just beneath the surface.
Written by Angela Santomero, creator of Blue’s Clues, Creative Galaxy, and the Emmy-nominated literacy series, Super Why!, Wishenpoof! is an animated series that revolves around Bianca, who has “wish magic,” which means if she wishes to play under the sea then -Wishenpoof! – She’s a mermaid, swimming around with the sea horses. Bianca uses her wish magic to help others and learns to solve life’s problems in her own creative way because with magic, or without, we all have the power to make good choices. This is Santomero’s second Amazon Studios series.
This summer, Amazon will premiere its first three kids series Creative Galaxy, Tumble Leaf and Annedroids exclusively on Prime Instant Video. Each show will focus on important skills for children – science, arts and critical thinking – and will foster creativity by promoting learning through play.
Amazon Original preschool programming is developed with the aid of a board of advisors led by Dr. Alice Wilder, one of the world’s foremost experts in educational and child psychology. Dr. Wilder earned universal acclaim for her work as the producer and director of research and development for the hit series Blue’s Clues and Blue’s Room. During her nearly decade-long involvement with Blue’s Clues, Dr. Wilder helped pioneer a new level of interaction between a show and its young viewers. She brings her expertise to Amazon’s programming to give parents confidence these programs will provide valuable life lessons while being entertaining at the same time to maintain their child’s interest.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
