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Amazon’s newly rebadged film streaming service launches tomorrow in the UK. Amazon Prime Instant Video was previously known as Lovefilm Instant, until Amazon renamed it recently.
Day one sees the premier of Alpha House, a political comedy starring John Goodman. Alpha House is the first fully commissioned series from Amazon Studios, in a bid to take on Netflix’s own House of Cards.
If you have Amazon Prime — the retailer’s paid-for service that gets you free delivery — then you’ll be able to watch Prime Instant Video’s 15,000 films and TV shows for free. Until your Prime needs renewing, anyway.
If you don’t have Prime and want to start watching, you’ll have to shell out £79 a year (which includes membership to Prime). Sign up before tomorrow, and you’ll get the service for just £49. If you just want to stream, you can pay £5.99 a month.
The downside is that from tomorrow, Amazon Prime will now cost £79 a year, even if you don’t want to use Amazon Prime Instant Video.
Alpha House follows four US senators sharing a house, and struggling to keep their personal lives and exploits out of the public eye. Alongside Goodman, it stars Clark Johnson from Homeland, Matt Malloy from Six Feet Under, and Mark Consuelos from All My Children. Wanda Sykes from Curb Your Enthusiasm is in there too, and Bill Murray makes a cameo. (If it’s anything like his champagne-necking appearance on The Graham Norton Show recently, I’ll be tuning in.)
Netflix’s homegrown show House of Cards started its second series recently. Star Kevin Spacey reckons this new way of serving up shows lets us viewers dip in and out of episodes like we do novels. He also has a vision of a 13-hour epic with no adverts, and no cliffhangers, just letting the audience choose when to pause and when to resume.
Will you give Amazon Prime Instant Video a whirl? Or do you prefer Netflix? Let me know in the comments, or over on our Facebook page.
