The virtual shelves at Ireland's newest video service have yet to be stocked to capacity. However, even before you get to such big headliners Mozart in the Jungle or The Grand Tour – an exclusive new Amazon series from former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May that ought to be called Dad Bait – there are plenty of ways to use up your discounted introductory month.
MR ROBOT
Elliot (Rami Malek) – a cyber-security programmer by day and underground hacker by night – is recruited into a shadowy anti-capitalist organisation by Mr Robot (Christian Slater). Amazon’s award-winning flagship series signposts a major plot twist early and often. Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re ahead of Sam Esmail’s clever show: there are many curveballs to come.
QUADROPHENIA
Mods versus Rockers in 1979. Phil Daniels stars in this gritty depiction of alienated British working-class youth, inspired by the 1973 rock opera of the same name by The Who. The band do not appear in the film, but Sting does. And it's still way less disturbing than Tommy.
SEINFELD
To paraphrase only slightly from the pitch for the show within the show: the basic idea is that Jerry plays himself and the show is about nothing. Eighteen years after Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer took their leave from our television screens, the banter still sounds timeless and pathologically self-centred.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
Long before Trump and Brexit, there was Philip K. Dick’s classic alternative history novel in which the Axis powers won the second World War. Alexa Davalos and Rufus Sewell head a fine ensemble cast in this slow-burning, clever dystopian adaptation. Stay tuned for season one’s oh-my cliffhanger.
TRANSPARENT
Fun with family and gender politics. When a middle-aged Jewish patriarch tells his ex-wife and hilariously self-obsessed adult that he is now Maura, not Mort (Jeffrey Tambor), it’s just the beginning of a series of revelations in Jill Soloway’s brilliantly crafted, multi-generational dramedy.
SERENITY
The renegade crew of a "Firefly-class" spaceship harbour a girl with psychic powers and a secret. Browncoats – the preferred nomenclature for die-hard fans of the space opera serial Firefly – were thrilled when Josh Whedon (Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) resurrected their favourite, cancelled show as this rip-roaring 2005 adventure. Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk star.
DAZED AND CONFUSED
Nobody does American coming-of-age movies better than Richard Linklater (Boyhood) and this riotous 1993 comedy is arguably the highest of his high-school adventures. Cruise with cool (and not so cool) Texas teens on the last day of term in 1976, a time of hazing, parties, pranks, high-jinx and a very chill Matthew McConaughey.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
Precocious young Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe went undercover for a year at a San Diego high school to produce the 1981 non-fiction bestseller Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Universal Studios first approached David Lynch to adapt, before handing the project to Amy Heckerling (Clueless), on the strength of her AFI graduation film. Young Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh star.
BATTERY
Teenage Takumi Harada is the best baseball pitcher of his age when his family move to rural Okayama. Can he find a catcher who can keep up with his mighty spins? This poised elegant drama comes with anime master Mochizuki Tomomi attached, and original character designs by Shimura Takako.
SCROOGED
A hilariously caustic TV executive is visited by three typically slapstick and often violent ghosts. Bill Murray has seldom been more Murrayish than in this wicked 1988 adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. 'Tis the season, right?
