Amazon’s released its new round of pilots (and wants to know what you think)

It’s Amazon pilots season again: when they unveil initial episodes of several prospective online series and allow customers (and critics) to tell them what we think. This time around, everyone’s favourite geek from the O.C, Adam Brody, has a lead role in The Cosmopolitans, a Paris-set comedy about a group of expats that also stars Chloe Sevigny.

The four other shows they’ve just released are:

Really – A dark comedy about married life starring Sarah Chalke, the show’s director Jay Chandrasekhar, and Selma Blair.

Red Oaks – An ‘80s-set story about a 20-year old who takes a summer job at a Dirty Dancing-style country club. Jennifer Grey is even in it (presumably nowhere near any corners).

Hysteria – American Beauty’s Mena Suvari is a neurologist trying to crack down on a quick-spreading virus that causes violent spasms. (!)

Hand of God – Ron ‘he’ll always be the Beast to me’ Perlman plays a judge who thinks the man upstairs is giving him personal instructions after his son ends up in a coma.

Amazon first pilot season was in April 2013, when they debuted 14 shows, going on to make full series of five, the most successful of which was Animal House, starring John Goodman, which is currently filming its second season.

This February, they released 10 more, five of them for children, the rest a mix of comedies and dramas. They went ahead with two of the kids’ shows and four of the others, including what many people/I considered the standout in terms of quality, Transparent, a dramedy about a father who comes out as a trans woman, played by Jeffrey Tambor from Arrested Development. (It’s more sensitively-handled than it might sound.)

All 10 episodes of that series will be released on Sept 26, the first time Amazon has copied Netflix’s ‘drop it all at once’ release model. It remains to be seen if this will bring an Orange is the New Black level of success, but either way, you can now watch Amazon’s latest pilots for free via the website – and then vote for your faves.

Diane Shipley