Prime Video is no stranger to a compelling crime drama series, with a large majority of them making up the best Prime Video shows. However, it’s new procedural drama On Call hasn’t appeared to hit home with critics, landing a below-average score of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing (it has to be said that audiences have given it a much more favorable 90%).
Set in Long Beach, California, the show follows veteran training officer Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) and her novice partner Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente), who have the responsibility of keeping the local community safe while they process the recent loss of their colleague. For a brand-new show on one of the best streaming services, the early reviews aren’t great, but since Prime Video’s library is one of the most vast out there, we have three other crime dramas to recommend that are more worthy of your time and attention.
Whether it’s espionage, a detective story, or a tense court drama, these three shows are some of Prime Video’s finest and unlike On Call, each have respectable Rotten Tomatoes score of over 85% with the critics.
The Fall
- RT score: 85%
- Age rating: TV-PG
- Runtime: ~60 minutes
- Creator: Allan Cubitt
Set in the environment of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), detective Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) is drafted from the London Metropolitan Police to assist the PSNI when a serial killer goes on a spree attacking young women around Belfast. As the case unravels, Gibson learns that run-of-the-mill father and husband Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) is leading a double life as family man and serial killer hiding in plain sight.
With no prior experience to cases this severe, the PSNI puts its trust into the hands of Gibson, who is their only hope to putting a stop to the violent murders and take down the perpetrator. While the show is available on Prime Video in the US and Australia, it’s streaming on Netflix in the UK.
Mr and Mrs Smith
- RT score: 91%
- Age rating: TV-MA
- Runtime: ~42 minutes
- Creator: Francesca Sloane & Donald Glover
A recent addition to Prime Video’s extensive library of TV shows, Mr and Mrs Smith takes inspiration from the 2005 movie of the same name starring power couple at the time Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. But Sloane and Glover’s reimagining of the ’00s classic adopts a more modern approach.
When two strangers independently agree to take on a job as agents, they find themselves assuming different identities as a married couple. With their missions and instructions being sent to them from a mysterious text source, each episode sees the pair tackle a different mission using their spy skills while forming a marriage-like relationship.
Goliath
- RT score: 86%
- Age rating: TV-MA
- Runtime: ~50 minutes
- Creator: David E. Kelley & Jonathan Shapiro
Goliath was a powerhouse of a show, airing from 2016 until its fourth and final season in 2021. In this legal drama, former lawyer Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) is now a disgraced ambulance chaser who’s presented with a wrongful death case against a law firm giant with whom he was once affiliated. When he agrees to take on the case, his team finds themselves at the centre of a life-or-death trial that could make or break his chance at redemption.