If you've ever given Prime Video a cursory glance, you may have noticed that it's missing something rather important.
Despite a presence in more than 10 million UK homes and the backing of one of the world's largest companies, the streamer has long struggled to make any genuinely impactful British dramas.
The question is: could that be about to change?
This week, Sophie Turner leads the cast of Steal, a brand new thriller set and filmed in London, which follows investment firm employee Zara after she is forced at gunpoint to aid a violent robbery.
It follows Golden Globe-nominated miniseries The Girlfriend, released mere months earlier, which charted the delirious feud between a protective mother and her son's mysterious new partner.
At first glance, the two shows wouldn't appear to share much in common, but take a closer look and parallels begin to emerge which could signal where Prime Video is headed with its UK originals.
The Girlfriend's co-lead Cherry (Olivia Cooke) and Steal's protagonist Zara (Turner) are both young women from working-class homes, marred by absent or abusive fathers and strained relationships with their world-weary mothers.
Both are unjustly overlooked in their elitist workplaces due to classism, but use this to their advantage in vengeful schemes involving rather hopeless men, i.e. Daniel (Laurie Davidson) and Luke (Archie Madekwe).
Despite the questionable morals that Cherry and Zara exhibit, these tenacious underdogs remain at least partly sympathetic as they fight for a secure foothold in a world stacked against them.
While The Girlfriend takes a more darkly humorous flavour to Steal, the base recipe is remarkably similar and shares ingredients with Prime's other recent UK drama, Malice; another star-led revenge thriller with the rich and powerful in its crosshairs.
It's an ironic target for a company whose founder is one of the world's wealthiest men, with a personal fortune that would dwarf the most moneyed characters in The Girlfriend, Steal and Malice combined.
But not one of these shows is a genuine indictment of the super-rich (as seen in Parasite or Succession). Instead, they play like Channel 5-style airport fiction, with a level of gloss and celebrity closer to Apple TV's typical offerings.
Suffice it to say, they aren't revolutionary or particularly ambitious. Nevertheless, such watchable mystery thrillers are a sturdy foundation to build on as Prime Video executives attempt to revitalise their UK scripted output (as reported by Ankler).
But can they comprise the entire strategy? That depends on what the platform is hoping to achieve.
These bread and butter projects might be enough to draw a healthy crowd. They could even pick up the odd award nomination, like The Girlfriend, although I suspect that was largely out of respect for director and star Robin Wright.
The fun-but-frivolous drama wasn't a frontrunner in either of its categories, nor did it turbocharge conversation on a mass scale like fellow miniseries Adolescence – which Prime Video infamously passed on.
All this to say that, if the streamer truly wants competitive British drama, it isn't enough to simply cut and paste a recognisable Brit into a broadly enjoyable thriller – be it Cooke, Turner, Martin Compston (Fear) or Jenna Coleman (Wilderness).
Instead, executives should take a cue from their own US output, which is a balance of crowd-pleasing vanilla flavour like Reacher, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Bosch, with more offbeat fare like Mr & Mrs Smith, Overcompensating or The Boys.
There are promising signs that the UK counterparts could yet follow suit, with Bait – a meta comedy-drama starring Riz Ahmed as an actor up for Bond – and the highly publicised Tomb Raider reboot from Phoebe Waller-Bridge coming down the pipeline.
The former marks an overdue investment by the streamer in British comedy; a genre it has inexplicably overlooked despite early success as the BBC's international partner on Fleabag.
Waller-Bridge's return with Tomb Raider – now filming here in England with Steal's own Sophie Turner – could well be her answer to Donald Glover's Mr & Mrs Smith (a project she dropped out of midway through development).
Will these gambles be enough to draw people away from Netflix? That's unclear, given that the rival platform seems to have the easiest time launching hit British shows, regardless of their quality.
But even if they can simply make people sit up and notice Prime UK's originals, that will be more than many were doing before.
Steal and The Girlfriend are available to stream on Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that.
Add Steal to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
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