Amazon announced today the anticipated new period series Red Oaks is locked and loaded for all Prime Members. The coming-of-age-tale, centered on a college student working at a suburban New Jersey country club on his summer break in 1985, premieres today with 10 episodes. Apart from the ’80s antics, the series is also notable as one of the first to support HDR (High Dynamic Range) for the latest and greatest in 4K UHD resolution.
The expected third link in a chain of well-received dramedies from Amazon’s original content vault (following Mozart in the Jungle and award-winning series Transparent) Red Oaks follows the struggles of young NYU student David Meyers (Craig Roberts) as he attempts to navigate his future, balance his prospective love life, and please his hilariously hypercritical father.
The series has been described by Amazon as a mix between Caddy Shack and The Graduate, with Meyers at the center of a host of eclectic characters, from his wild high school friends, to his mismatched parents, to the wealthy members of the Red Oaks Country Club where he earns his spending money — specifically the hilariously cantankerous Paul Reiser as “corporate raider” and generally unpleasant person, Getty.
The latest original series aimed at bringing Prime into the big leagues with the likes of Netflix and even HBO, Red Oaks has a respectable list of big names attached. Along with Reiser, stars include familiar names like Reiser’s best friend from hit ’90s sitcom Mad About You, Richard Kind (who plays Roberts’ father), along with other blasts from the past like Jennifer Grey (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dirty Dancing), and on-the-rise unknowns like Ennis Esmer (who plays club tennis pro Nash), and Gage Golightly (the spandex-clad club aerobics instructor).
The project boasts some big names behind the scenes too, including Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Behind the Candelabra), and director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Eastbound and Down) who serve as executive producers.
As mentioned above, also of note is that the series is one of the first from Amazon (or any other network, for that matter) that will be available in 4K UHD with HDR for those who have the freshest HDR-equipped TVs from Samsung, Sony, and LG. Often touted as the icing on the cake for 4K UHD, HDR enhances all those extra pixels by allowing for extreme contrast between the lightest and darkest images on screen, and vastly improved shading for colors that look much more like what we see in the real world.
You can take a good look at some of the ’80s shenanigans of the new series below, or serve up all 10 episodes in sparkling 4K UHD with HDR from your Amazon Prime account right now.
