In the wake of the seemingly overnight explosion in popularity of Prime Instant Video-exclusive Transparent, Amazon Studios announced today that it has greenlit the show for a second season. New episodes of Amazon’s self-described number 1 ranked series on its site, which stars Arrested Development alum Jeffrey Tambor, will debut in 2015.
Transparent follows the Los Angeles-based Pfefferman family whose patriarch, played by Tambor, reveals that he has decided to live the rest of his life as a woman. The show was created by Jill Soloway, best known for her work directing and writing for the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under.
Since its debut on September 26, Transparent has remained the overall top-ranked series on Prime Instant Video, but Prime subscribers aren’t the only ones in love with the Amazon original. The series has secured an impressive 98-percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, easily landing the site’s coveted “Certified Fresh” stamp of approval. Transparent has also garnered an extremely flattering “Critics Consensus” that virtually enshrines Soloway’s creation in TV history:
“As much about a change in television as it is about personal change, Transparent raises the bar for programming with sophistication and sincere dedication to the human journey, warts and all.”
Transparent‘s freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes is second only to the 100 percent awarded to The Good Wife‘s sixth season. The Amazon Studios original also currently holds a Metascore of 91 at the review-aggregating site Metacritic.
But perhaps the most significant factor in Transparent‘s garnering of so many glowing comparisons with Netflix’s House of Cards is what Amazon calls the show’s “binge-worthiness.” As the first original release from Amazon to adopt the binge format of releasing all episodes at once, Transparent has seen resounding success, with Amazon claiming nearly 80 percent of the show’s viewers have “binged” on two or more episodes in the same day. Taking a cue from the king of original Web content, Netflix, seems to have paid off.
Amazon’s IMDB-connected “X-Ray” feature, which the company expanded last year to include metadata for television shows, has also played a role in Transparent‘s success. X-Ray lets users learn more about what they’re watching or reading with a simple screen tap on Kindle or Wii U devices. Since launching, the series has become one of the top five most X-Ray’d series on Prime Instant Video, with a handful of the show’s stars having surfaced on the top-ten list of the most X-Ray’d actors on the streaming service, as well.
If you’d like to find out for yourself what all the fuss is about, you can catch up on Transparent via the Amazon Instant Video app, and don’t worry — you’ve still got plenty of time before the show’s second season kicks off next year.
