Amazon orders pilot starring ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ ‘Pretty Little Liars’ actors

Amazon has been in the scripted programming business for a little while now, and while they’ve had some interesting ideas, none of them to us have really stood out as “we must watch this” TV … at least until the idea of “Hand of God” was crafted.

Amazon has announced now that they’ve ordered the pilot for this series, which stars Ron Perlman in his first role since (spoilers!) his character of Clay was killed during “Sons of Anarchy” this past season. He plays the character of Judge Pernell, a tough man who doesn’t always flirt with the right side of the law who starts to hear voices through his son’s ventilator. The cast excited us greatly here, given that you have Julian Morris (“Pretty Little Liars“), Elizabeth McLaughlin, Andre Royo, and Garret Dillahunt

Here’s what we don’t like about Amazon’s plan, and it’s the same thing that we feel about a lot of the programming avenues out there: It gets very expensive to watch all the great stuff on TV in a legitimate manner. Let’s say you want to watch “Game of Thrones,” “Sons of Anarchy,” “House of Cards,” “Homeland,” and “Hand of God” if it is picked up to series. That’s a lot of cash to shell out every month to all of these premium outlets. We know it’s necessary to fund many of them, but still. It used to be a little easier to watch everything that was playing on TV.

But since Perlman is fantastic and the show has promise (at least so long as the premise stays strong and does not become a straight-up procedural), we’ll keep watch on this. Meanwhile, we’ll also stay focused on the final “Sons of Anarchy” season, which recently promoted a pair of actors in the wake of Ron’s absence.

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Photo: FX