As Amazon dumps cement mixers full of money into Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, Fallout, and The Boys-verse, it’s easy to forget that the idea of the company that overnights paper towels and golf balls to your home making its own television programs was once considered risky and a bit absurd. But while it was Netflix that opened up a new front in the streaming wars by releasing House of Cards and Orange is the New Black to significant acclaim, Amazon soon joined the rush to reframe such services as not just digital warehouses for old shows, but pop culture destinations in their own right.
Most of its early efforts were failures. Good Girls Revolt, essentially “Mad Men for Women,” was ignored. Vox’s Emily St. James called Hand of God, a vigilante cult thriller, “excruciatingly terrible.” Z: The Beginning of Everything, a forgotten drama about the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, summed up the fact that Amazon had no apparent idea who its users were or what they wanted. But the streamer has since found tremendous success with genre television, a transformation that began when The Man in the High Castle debuted 10 years ago today.
