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Amazon’s great TV commissioning experiment has picked new TV shows for its Lovefilm streaming service, with John Goodman-starring political satire Alpha House and Silicon Valley sitcom Betas set for full series online, Reuters reports.
Meanwhile, zom-com Zombieland, a follow-up to the Woody Harrelson movie of the same name, has taken an axe to the brainbox after fans panned it. “I’ll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans,” whinged writer Rhett Reese. “You guys successfully hated it out of existence.”
Last month Amazon posted pilots for eight comedies with the idea that user reviews and hard data on how much of each show people watched would then inform the commissioning process.
Written by Gary Trudeau, best known for US comic strip Doonesbury, Alpha House is about four senior politicians who happen to live together in a house in Washington DC. Amazon hopes it’ll glean some of the buzz of its rival Netflix’s drama House of Cards and HBO’s comedy Veep.
Betas is programmed by a similar algorithm to The Big Bang Theory, with a cast of energy drink-chugging nerds or “tech-savvy millennials” as its robot writers refer to them.
Lovefilm has also signed up blood-soaked dark age drama Vikings, which is kind of like Sons of Anarchy, but with longships instead of Harleys. Aussie heartthrob Travis Kimmel plays legendary explorer and roisterer Ragnar Lothbrok; Gabriel Byrne is his jealous chieftain. It premieres later this week in the UK, on 24 May, after a successful run on the History channel in the US.
Lovefilm is £5 per month, £1 less than its arch rival Netflix, while both offer a month’s free trial. The two have split many TV shows and movies between them, with little overlap, so if you want a comprehensive collection you have to get both.
Are you tempted to sign up to Lovefilm on the back of these new shows? Or are you Netflix to the bone? Stream your comments below, or over on our on-demand Facebook page.
