Enlarge / The Expanse returns to Amazon Prime for another epic season. (credit: Amazon Prime)

Amazon Prime's epic science fiction series The Expanse is back for its fifth season. In her review last week, Ars' Tech Policy Reporter Kate Cox called it "the best [season] since its first, a long-awaited high-stakes payoff to several seasons' worth of setup," adding, "if you drifted away from the show during earlier seasons, like something accidentally dropped in microgravity, this new season makes it worth finding a way to come back."

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

As we've noted previously , The Expanse is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), exploring interplanetary tensions that are breaking out all over a Solar System long since colonized by humans—mostly between Earthers, Martians, and "Belters." Part mystery, part political thriller , part classic space opera, The Expanse has earned almost nothing but praise from critics and its devoted fans alike, not just for its gripping storytelling but also its excellent use of accurate physics .

Enlarge / (l-r) Emma D'Arcy, Nick Frost, and Samson Kanyo star in Truth Seekers . (credit: Amazon Prime)

A lonely broadband installer with a side gig as a ghost hunter and his new partner encounter more supernatural intrigue than they bargained for in Truth Seekers , a new comedy series on Amazon Prime, created by Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, James Serafinowicz, and Nat Saunders. We're fans of Paul, Shaun of the Dead , and the rest of the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy , so it's nice to see Frost and Pegg back together on screen again. Truth Seekers brings their unique comic sensibility to the topic of paranormal investigation.

Per the official synopsis:

Truth Seekers is a supernatural comedy series about a team of part-time paranormal investigators who team up to uncover and film ghost sightings across the UK, sharing their adventures on an online channel for all to see. However, as they stake out haunted churches, underground bunkers and abandoned hospitals with their array of homemade ghost-detecting gizmos, their supernatural experiences grow more frequent, more terrifying and even deadly, as they begin to uncover a conspiracy that could bring about Armageddon for the entire human race.

Frost plays Gus—a lonely widowed guy with a boring job installing broadband for a company called SMYLE—who moonlights as an amateur paranormal investigator. The titular Truth Seekers is the name of his YouTube channel. Pegg has a somewhat smaller role (in terms of screen time) as Gus' cheerfully exuberant boss, Dave, who sports a positively disastrous wig and seems to be very keen on always maintaining "100 percent coverage." Is he really that gung-ho about customer service, or is there some ulterior motive at SMYLE?

In my review of The Boys S1 last year, I called the Amazon Prime series "a wickedly funny, darkly irreverent adaptation" and "ideal late-summer therapy for anyone who has grown a bit weary of the constant onslaught of superhero movies." I wasn't alone in my love for the show: The Boys was a massive hit, and that success has continued with S2, which was the most-watched global launch of any Amazon series to date, pretty much doubling the show's worldwide audience. S2 is even better than its predecessor, deftly tackling timely themes and hot-button issues, while never sacrificing all the biting satire and good, gory fun that we loved about S1. And can we just give Antony Starr an Emmy already for his stunning performance as Homelander?

(Spoilers for S1 below; some spoilers for S2, but no major reveals.)

The Boys is set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real but corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, headed up by Homelander (Starr), a truly violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All-American hero, who mostly bullies his supe team into compliance. The other members include A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), who boasts super-speed but has also become addicted to the experimental performance-enhancing substance called Compound-V. The Deep (Chace Crawford) can breathe underwater, thanks to having gills—voiced in S2 by Patton Oswalt during a hallucination sequence—and converse with marine creatures.

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  Jessica Rothe plays Samantha, a fan of the Dystopia comic, keen to bid on the just-discovered copy of the unpublished sequel: Utopia . [credit: YouTube/Amazon Prime ]

It's a rare TV series that gives me pause about even writing a review, but Amazon's new sci-fi thriller Utopia turned out to be just that. Not because it isn't good—on the contrary, I found it both entertaining and thought provoking. But there are several key elements of the central plot that proved disquieting enough (even for someone like me who is not generally squeamish) that I had to ponder the pros and cons of giving space to a show whose release perhaps should have been postponed by a few months, given current world events. (I mean, read the room, Amazon! Geez!) In the end, the pro arguments won out.

(All major spoilers are below the second gallery. We'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

As we reported previously , the series is a reboot of the 2013 British version, about online fans of a graphic novel called Dystopia that seems to have the power to predict the real-world future. The fans are obsessed with tracking down the sequel, Utopia , and this makes them targets of a secret organization. Amazon has kept the same basic premise (with a few tweaks) and swapped in an American cast. Per the official premise: "When the conspiracy in the elusive comic Utopia is real, a group of young fans come together to embark on a high-stakes twisted adventure to use what they uncover to save themselves, each other and ultimately humanity."

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's later than usual , but Amazon Prime Day has arrived . The Dealmaster is here to guide you away from the junk and toward 2020's best Prime Day deals—particularly when it comes to discounts on gadgets and gear.

Much like last year, Prime Day 2020 is actually a 48-hour affair, live through October 13 and 14. The sales event remains a way for Amazon to bolster its hugely popular Prime membership program first and foremost, so you'll still need to subscribe to Prime to take advantage of the myriad Prime Day sales. Those on a free trial can take part, but trials are only available to people who haven't been a Prime member within the last 12 months.

For those who haven't bothered with Prime Day in the past, know that most of the "deals" Amazon advertises aren't, well, deals. Sometimes, a product's advertised price isn't much cheaper than its typical street price; other times, the product itself just isn't worth buying in the first place. This hasn't changed with Prime Day 2020.

Amazon Prime debuted the first trailer (embedded above) for the upcoming fifth season of The Expanse during the series panel at the New York Comic Con's Metaverse today. And the stakes are high. According to the official premise, "The future of The Belt has begun as Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) wages Armageddon against the Inners for a lifetime of oppression and injustice."

(Some spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As we previously reported, The Expanse is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), exploring interplanetary tensions that are breaking out all over a Solar System long since colonized by humans—mostly between Earthers, Martians, and "Belters." Part mystery, part political thriller , part classic space opera, The Expanse has earned almost nothing but praise from critics and its devoted fans alike, not just for its gripping storytelling, but also its excellent use of accurate physics . The third and fourth seasons earned a rare 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (seasons one and two earned 76 percent and 96 percent, respectively).