New to Amazon Prime Video in March

American Gods’ troubled second season will stream weekly on Amazon Prime Video from Monday.

Early reviews have been lukewarm, with TV Guide dubbing it “a pit of wasted potential“:

For what it’s worth, the series looks mostly the same as it did in Season 1. It has the same tone and style, but a show that looks cool visually is nothing if the narrative isn’t there to propel (or even sustain) it, and so the show falls victim to the same issues that plagued Season 1. Although the second season appears to more closely adhere to the narrative of the novel, the story continues down the same frustrating, opaque path the show was on at the end of Season 1, only Shadow now knows a bit of what’s going on and is no longer a totally blind puppy.

Echoed Entertainment Weekly: “[Season one] could be obtuse or even incoherent. Season 2 commits a greater sin: It’s punishingly expository, and boring.”

“It continues to feel as if the show, like its characters, is traveling in circles, never quite clear on its destination or means of getting there,” Roilling Stone said.

● You can view the trailer here.

Premiering on March 29 will be Hanna, a series spun off the movie of the same name.

“Hanna is a gritty and serious approach to a story that could be supremely ridiculous,” IndieWire said.

Like the 2011 Joe Wright-directed film of the same name, this serialised adaptation tracks a 15-year-old girl raised in the wilderness to be a lethal, possibly even superhuman, killing machine. Yet instead of elevating her skills to superhero levels, David Farr’s script sticks to the same just-north-of-realistic approach as Farr’s movie did (yup, he co-wrote that, too), while still delivering all the ass-kicking spy action fans can hope for. Also, not for nothing, this is the best use of Kinnaman since The Killing.

“For people who didn’t see the movie or who objected to Joe Wright’s highfalutin pretensions, there’s a good chance this version of Hanna will work better than for fans of the movie,” The Hollywood Reporter said.

“I’d compare it to the way The CW’s Nikita adapted Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita, in that it takes a piece of art that used genre as a delivery system for something more idiosyncratic and, instead, pushes the genre over the idiosyncrasies.”

● You can view the trailer here.

Already streaming on the platform are The Widow and, from this weekend, Made in Heaven.

The latter is billed as an “immersive drama series” reflecting the lives of upscale modern India, narrated through the eyes of two wedding planners, set against the backdrop of quintessential Indian weddings.

The former stars Kate Beckinsale as a woman searching to uncover the mystery of the disappearance of her husband in the Congo.

It was written by Harry and Jack Williams (Rellik, The Missing) and was judged “suspenseful and smartly paced” by the New York Post and “lean and taut” by the Sydney Morning Herald but The Atlantic thought it “remarkably clumsy“.

● You can view the trailer here.