Good news for those of you patiently awaiting the premiere of Amazon's new original shows (there must be some of you out there, right?): According to Vulture, Amazon has announced that their first two original series, Alpha House and Betas, will each premiere this month through their streaming service, Amazon Prime.
For Alpha House, episodes will be made available on November 15th, and for Betas, episodes will be made available on November 22nd. Each show will have three episodes made available to stream for free, and if you get hooked, you have to sign up for Amazon Prime to see the rest. Note: The pilots of both shows are currently available to stream for free on the site now.
What makes Amazon Prime different from Netflix, however, is that they'll be making new episodes available week-to-week—so no binge-watching here. This may seem like an annoying move at first, but let's think about this for a moment: Like many before it (Breaking Bad, for instance), perhaps these shows are meant to be viewed with week-long breaks between episodes. If anything, it'll certainly be interesting to see how Amazon fares by going against Netflix's tried and true model of instant gratification.
These shows have both been in the making for a while: In April of this year, Amazon made the pilots of eight new shows available for customers to stream, and vote which they liked best. Both Alpha House (which stars John Goodman and follows a group of senators living in the same house) and Betas (which stars John Daly and follows a group of nerds who create an app) were both picked up after favorable reactions.
Kind of favorable, anyway—we reviewed the pilots back in April, and found that Alpha House just offered the revelation that "broad jokes about Republicans aren't as funny as real life," while Betas was basically "Workaholics x The Big Bang Theory - charisma/talent = fart." Yikes. Everyone deserves a second chance, though, right?
[via Vulture]
