There are plenty of excellent action TV shows on Prime Video, but if you haven’t seen these series yet, you need to make sure you watch them. Amazon Prime Video has a lot of excellent TV shows, both in its original catalog and its expansive library, and that’s before you purchase any add-ons.
Action TV shows are easy to make but hard to make correctly. It’s a fairly broad term, action, but some shows are clearly operating in the genre more than any other. These action TV shows on Prime Video are all worth watching for different reasons and will satisfy that action genre craving.
Hanna (2019-2021)
Based on the 2011 film of the same name by director Joe Wright, Hanna is a three-season action series starring Esme Creed-Miles as the titular Hanna. Hanna is a 15-year-old girl living with her surrogate father, Erik Heller (Joel Kinnaman), in a remote forest in Poland.
Hanna is no ordinary child; she was the subject of a secret CIA program, codenamed UTRAX, where children’s DNA was enhanced while still in the womb in order to create super-soldiers. When the CIA orders the project closed and the participants terminated, Erik saved Hanna and raised her as his own.
It’s a gritty action series that starts off a bit long-winded and plodding. However, seasons 2 and 3 are huge jumps in quality and even serve to improve the first season. The show is filled with turns and twists, each more elaborate and engaging than the last one, and linked together with excellent action.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999)
One of the best action shows you can find is from the 1990s, and it’s available in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video. Hercules: The Legendary Journey is now considered a cult classic TV show, perfectly representative of action and fantasy TV storytelling of the time period.
Kevin Sorbo stars as the mythical Hercules, and Michael Hurst co-stars as Iolaus, a lesser-known character from the Greek myth. The show is only loosely based on the actual Hercules myth, but there are plenty of creatures and characters out of ancient Greek tomes for Hercules to try his hand with.
The success of Hercules: The Legendary Journey spawned two more notable series in Xena: Warrior Princess and Young Hercules, but it also had a hand in the success of several other mythical TV shows that became popular soon after Hercules. It’s a thrilling, action-packed romp across a fabled version of Greece.
Fallout (2024-Present)
TV shows based on video games have been a losing prospect up until recently, but with The Walking Dead and Fallout soaring critically and with audiences, it seems like things have flipped. Fallout, in particular, is an impressive feat. Based on an acclaimed series, it never seemed perfectly fit for TV.
Prime Video’s Fallout manages to make something not only respectful of the source material but worth watching all on its own. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth, after a nuclear exchange wiped out most of humanity. The survivors took refuge in fallout bunkers, where they’ve been since.
Lucy MacLean (Elle Purnell) is one of these “Vault dwellers”, as they’re known, and tragic circumstances force her to the surface world where society has gone on in strange and dangerous ways. It’s a thrilling, mystery-filled, and fantastically acted series that captures the tone of the video games perfectly.
Reacher (2022-Present)
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Prime Video’s Reacher has to be up there as one of the greatest casting decisions in the last decade. The Jack Reacher of Lee Child’s book series is a much different figure than the one played by Tom Cruise in the two solid but woefully miscast films.
Jack Reacher is a hulking mountain of a man who can say just as much with a steady stare as he can with his fists. Ritchson looks like a linebacker crossed with a Cape Buffalo, and the show understands that his presence alone should be enough to send bad guys running.
The series follows the title character, a former U.S. military police officer turned drifter who goes from town to town, battling hardened criminals and protecting those in society who have little recourse. Reacher is a lot of fun and never forgets that good action should also be energetic and a bit funny.
The Legend Of Vox Machina (2022-Present)
The Legend of Vox Machina is based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG game, so you know it has to have some great action. Specifically, the show is based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the cast of Critical Role, a web series where professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons.
Set in Exandria, The Legend of Vox Machina plays out similarly to how the real campaign did, with the main character classes of Dungeons & Dragons all present, and all voiced by the actors who appeared in the original web series. It’s intelligently scripted, blending a great story with the “choose-your-own-adventure” attitude of the RPG.
While the Critical Role version has a lot of adult humor and wildly graphic situations, The Legend of Vox Machina wisely tones down the extreme parts of the story, making it more palatable in the visual medium. It’s beautifully animated, action-packed, and filled with nods to the beloved RPG.
The Boys (2019-Present)
Based on Garth Ennis’ comic book series, The Boys is an Amazon Prime Video original series, and arguably the best Amazon Prime Video original TV show. Set in a world where superheroes exist but the laws of physics and society are just like our own, The Boys depicts the reality of what that world would look like.
Superpowered individuals, The Boys suggests, would not be interested in helping the people of Earth; they’d only be interested in themselves. They may even come to see themselves as gods, and why shouldn’t they? They’re blessed with immense amounts of power, and people basically worship them.
Originally, a parody of the MCU and other superhero shows and movies, Prime Video‘s The Boys has come to satirize modern society as a whole. It draws unsettling, though no doubt entertaining, parallels to society’s seeming love of strong-man leaders willing to crush them as long as the hero has a smile on his face and makes the right promises.
