Although Prime Video has a range of great TV shows, these six stand out as ones that will immediately capture the audience within the first scene. Many of the best original shows on Prime right now, like Bosch and Invincible, take an episode to fully suck in the audience. I have a lot of love for both of those shows, but they don’t immediately suck in new viewers from the start. The same goes for Hazbin Hotel, which doesn’t really grab viewers until after the first song, which takes about half the episode to get to.
However, the streamer has released several shows with the perfect opening scene. They know what will appeal to their audience, and they use that to their advantage. Of course, this doesn’t look identical across the board. What will immediately capture a sci-fi audience in their 30s isn’t the same thing that will capture a young adult romance audience. However, these six shows really understand how to bring in viewers from the start.
6
The Devil’s Hour
Whether you choose to look at the title sequence or the first scene in the story, the genre-bending British TV show The Devil’s Hour will immediately hook viewers. The title sequence, which is the opening of The Devil’s Hour, features chaotic imagery that feels mildly disturbing. The color grading also makes the story feel trippy, which is the first sign that The Devil’s Hour is actually a sci-fi show miscategorized as a drama-thriller.
Then, the first scene in the story, which is only 58 seconds long, flashes forward to Lucy, who has a busted lip and a bruised face, talking to an older man named Gideon in an interrogation room. Peter Capaldi’s narration is chilling, creating a tense atmosphere. The set is stripped down, putting all the focus on Lucy’s facial expressions. What’s more, Gideon introduces The Devil’s Hour’s central premise of Lucy waking up at 3:33 with a sense of déjà vu and painful dreams.
5
Fleabag
Fleabag is a phenomenal TV show that doesn’t get enough attention, despite holding a 100% Tomatometer score and a 92% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes. Somehow, this show has never made it to the mainstream, despite being just as good as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. However, it is truly a show that will capture viewers’ attention from the first scene. People will know pretty immediately whether this is the show for them because it lays everything out on the table.
The main character, who only goes by the name Fleabag, immediately breaks the fourth wall. Her dialogue shows how awkward and messy she is as a human being, which makes her all the more likable. She describes this extremely specific example of something she experienced as if it were relatable to every person ever. She makes commentary about her sex as it’s happening. She is literally bouncing on a guy’s dick as she is talking to the audience. Then, it ends with the most hilarious punchline to the whole scene, which I will leave viewers to discover for themselves.
4
Off Campus
Off Campus was one of the most highly anticipated romance book-to-TV adaptations, and it didn’t disappoint. The show opens with Hannah cleaning the hockey rink, Garrett is practicing, and the scene ends with her walking in on him showering. Rather than starting off slow and building up, the young-adult hockey romance immediately hooks audiences with Off Campus’s upbeat soundtrack. The clever side-by-side editing is visually captivating.
We learn that Hannah is a music lover, rocking out to “Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol. When she’s alone, she’s uninhibited enough to dance and sing to the music in Off Campus. Garrett is a conventionally attractive hockey player who works hard on the ice and practices even when nobody else is around. Then the two have a meet-cute in the locker room that’s perfect. There’s nudity and comedy. The shyer, more awkward side of Hannah comes out. We get to see Garrett’s charming cockiness in action. It immediately set expectations for what’s to come in the rest of Off Campus.
3
A League Of Their Own
The movie A League of Their Own quickly became a cult classic after its release, and it is now considered one of the best sports movies of all time. As such, expectations were incredibly high when news broke that Prime Video was re-telling the story as a TV show. Luckily, the TV show was phenomenal and hooked viewers from the very first scene. The first scene opens with an original score that shares the upbeat, jumpy feeling of “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman, establishing the pacing and time period.
The bat in the backpack is a small visual cue for the baseball story to come. All the visuals and costuming are on point, absorbing us into the world of Lake Valley, Idaho, 1943. Carson’s hilariously disheveled appearance is a sign of the wonderfully messy story to come. Plus, the first scene, where Carson is in a rush and a person just won’t stop talking to her, will be hilariously relatable to most folks.
2
My Lady Jane
The alternate history fantasy TV show My Lady Jane is raunchy, romantic, adventurous. Most importantly, though, it’s funny. The show introduces its cheeky comedy from the very first scene. The narrator quickly goes over the history of England’s kings and queens starting from Henry the Eighth and ending at Jane Seymore’s death. The actual dialogue includes some comedic bits, like the comment that Henry the Eighth treated his wives like Kleenex and calling Lady Jane an “intellectual rebel” and “a bit of a pain in the a**.”
However, the true humor comes from the animation and drawings. The way they draw all the wives dying is entertaining. The look of shock on the man’s face when Edward VI just keels over dead is comedy gold. To top it all off, the score behind the storybook-esque introduction subtly conveys a sense of excitement and adventure. Ultimately, My Lady Jane perfectly introduced the show with a scene that’s built to capture the target audience immediately.
1
Fallout
The first scene of Fallout is fantastic at capturing the audience’s attention, whether or not they know the video game. They immediately confirm that this is the end of the world as we know it, and then they contrast it with this picturesque moment of a rodeo cowboy performing at a birthday in what appears to be the 1950s. They chose the perfect song because it has a double meaning that becomes clear by the end of the first scene. The song “Orange Colored Sky” is traditionally about joy and love, but it quickly becomes about nuclear war.
The child actor playing young Janey does an incredible job working off the actor playing Cooper Howard. Cooper and Janey are the “everyman” characters reacting on behalf of humanity. The choice to show the horrified reactions of everyone and the chaos in slow motion is brilliant. It’s such a contrast to everything that led up to that point, and if people weren’t paying attention before, the sudden shift makes them pay attention now. The scene is so incredible that Walton Goggins even gushed about it to Vanity Fair, explaining that he bawled when he first saw the scene.
- founded
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September 7, 2006
- first original series
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alpha house