If there's one thing we've learned from the last few years of action on the best streaming services, it's that standing out from the crowd can be a challenge. Even the most original of concepts can struggle to lift off if the timing isn't quite right or it goes up against an unforeseen rival on another platform.
Still, Amazon looks like it's at least ticking the box for originality when it comes to the series it just unveiled – The Bondsman. It stars Kevin Bacon as a bounty hunter who finds himself unexpectedly resurrected after a job goes wrong and he loses his life. Now, though, he has a new boss: the literal devil.
Hub Halloran is a fun-looking character for Bacon, and seems to take the whole thing in his stride, getting used to the idea that he really did die an unglamorous death. He takes to his new role fairly quickly, forced to hunt down demons that have escaped from hell and give them a mortal end to send them back down to the hot place.
He'll have help along the way in the form of a liaison of sorts, who gives him his targets and explains how everything will work, but there will be other subplots to add some substance. Not the least of these will be how Hub manages to explain the whole situation to his family, and it looks from the trailer like some of them might even get roped in to help him out on jobs.
I wouldn't necessarily have considered comedy-horror all that popular of a genre, but it has to be said that there are increasingly more and more movies and series going for it at the moment. The Bondsman also mixes in a heavy supernatural slice of the pie to really make for a genre mixup that doesn't come around all that often, and I'll be fascinated to see if it can land as a hit for Prime Video.
I should get my answer fairly soon, too, since the show will arrive on 3 April, in less than a month's time. If it can match the charm of this first trailer, it could be a bit of a cult classic.
