'Alpha House' anchors Amazon's Prime offerings
Amazon already rules the online retail market, and soon it could be king of all video streaming services.
Its first original series, the political comedy "Alpha House," joins an already abundant library of movies and television shows available for streaming to subscribers of Amazon Prime.
From "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, "Alpha House" follows four (fictional) Republican senators who share a Washington, D.C., home and deal with various elections, scandals and belittling remarks from the other side of the aisle. The first three episodes are available now, but the remaining episodes will be exclusive to Prime members.
The pilot episode opens strong with a brief appearance by Bill Murray as a senator on the verge of a scandalous arrest. The remainder of the episode focuses on his ex-roommates: Senators Gil John Biggs (John Goodman), Robert Bettencourt (Clark Johnson) and Louis Laffer (Matt Malloy), as well as skirt-chasing young senator Andy Guzman (Mark Consuelos, aka Mr. Kelly Ripa).
The pilot's jokes are broad jabs at the Republican party agenda, but the subsequent episodes find humor through character interactions and the largely non-partisan absurdity of D.C. politicking. Goodman is the obvious standout playing an exaggerated version of his brief stint on "The West Wing." He even seems to bring along one of the dogs his "WW" character had in the Oval Office.
Storylines include a Congressional trip to Afghanistan and an impromptu wrestling match on "The Colbert Report." In addition to Murray and Stephen Colbert, guest stars in the initial set of episodes include Cynthia Nixon and Wanda Sykes as rival senators, and not-so-little-anymore Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") as a newspaper reporter.
Three episodes in, "Alpha House" is still rough around the edges, especially in how it tries to incorporate real-life issues and politicians. With the speed in which scandals come and go in the real D.C., the show feels somewhat behind the times. Nevertheless, the regular cast and rotation of guest stars could help the series find a more consistent groove.
More about Amazon Prime
At $79/year, Prime subscribers get two-day shipping on most retail items on Amazon.com, access to thousands of Kindle books and streaming rights to 40,000+ movies and TV episodes, including exclusive access to "Alpha House," their other new comedy series, "Betas" (more on that next week), and a host of upcoming original programming.
There is considerable overlap in the movies and TV shows available that are already present on Netflix, though exclusive content includes Food Network shows like "Chopped" and History Channel favorites like "Pawn Stars" and "American Pickers" (both of which were vanquished from Netflix ages ago).
Amazon also offers digital downloads and rentals of the latest film releases and television episodes, all for individual prices. Like satellite and cable offerings, their Video on Demand service includes rentals for a few movies still in theaters (mostly independent offerings).
As for Prime, people who shop often through Amazon and like the free two-day shipping will enjoy the bonus television and movie content. Purely for the streaming content, Netflix and Hulu Plus provide more value at this point.
Just don't expect a juggernaut like Amazon to stay in third place for very long. "Alpha House" is the first play in a calculated game that will only benefit consumers in the long run.
Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.