The best TV shows on Amazon Prime right now (October 2022)

In the 1980s, with the Cold War getting warmer, American pop culture produced a bounty of movies expressing the anxieties and patriotism of the era: Films like Red Dawn, or 1985’s lesser-known Invasion U.S.A. (starring Chuck Norris). Comrade Detective lifts the aesthetics of ’80s action cinema and filters them through a (sardonic) communist lens, following a pair of Romanian detectives investigating a plot by Western imperialists to subvert the communist order. The show — which is framed as an actual show from Romania, dubbed over in English with voices from actors like Channing Tatum and Joseph-Gordon Levitt — begins with detective Gregor Anghel (a hard-nosed cop who plays by his own rules but gets results) and his partner busting drug dealers, only for a sniper to shoot Anghel’s partner. Out for vengeance, Anghel and his new partner, Iosif Baciu, hunt the killer but stumble on a conspiracy of international proportions. Comrade Detective is a strange show even by the inventive standards of modern television, a parody wrapped in a layer of faux-authenticity, but its odd charms are worth watching.

If you love The Boys, which returns in the summer of 2022 for season 3, you can satiate your desire for more of the egotistical, shallow, super-powered, Vought-owned Supes until then with this animated anthology spinoff series, which focuses on “unseen stories within The Boys universe.” With names like Awkwafina, Ilana Glazer, Seth Rogen, Andy Samberg, and Aisha Tyler attached to the show, you can expect plenty of hilarity, gore, emotion, and shocking moments in the not-safe-for-kids series. Eric Kripke, executive producer and showrunner of The Boys, serves as executive producer of this spinoff alongside Rogen and Evan Goldberg. With eight episodes in season 1, there’s plenty of time to savor this show while anxiously awaiting the return of Homelander, Billy Butcher, Hughie, Starlight, Kimiko, and other fan-favorite characters from the original show. All of the shows are based on the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson DC Comics comic book of the same name.

The scripted animated series, an Amazon original, hails from Critical Role, which created a Dungeons & Dragons Twitch stream that became tremendously popular. This resulted in the development of the adult animated fantasy series, funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Based on campaign one, the story follows the seven-member team known as Vox Machina play Level 7 of D&D, working to avenge the murder of the ruler of a town called Whitestone. The series, which will surely appeal to those who love D&D and who got hooked on the Twitch stream, has already been renewed for a second season.