March 28, 2024

Amazon seeks to reach viewers with ‘Hand of God’

The upcoming Amazon pilot “Hand of God,” is about Ron Perlman as a judge who believes God is guiding him after an attack on his family, is among the latest batch of potential series that will be streamed online by Amazon beginning Thursday. The Internet retail giant took a cue from Netflix last year and started producing its own shows. Which shows become full series will depend on audience response.

Perlman said he was interested in moving right into another TV project after coming off six seasons as the patriarch of a ruthless biker gang on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy.” To him, “Hand of God” was “too good to be true” because it was the first script he read post-”Anarchy,” and the character of Judge Harris Pernell was so different from his previous roles.

“I was completely intimidated,” said Perlman over a lunch on the set. “The character is this compendium of very, very bold qualities — one of which is that he’s in the middle of a breakdown when we meet him. Whoever he is in life, he’s deeply compromised during the pilot and going through self-discovery as God comes into his life.”

Dana Delany will play the take-no-prisoners wife of the law-bending judge.

Amazon will begin streaming “Hand of God” on Thursday, alongside pilots for the medical thriller “Hysteria,” starring Mena Suvari; the marriage comedy “Really,” from writer-director-actor Jay Chandrasekhar; the 1980s country club romp “Red Oaks,” from producer Steven Soderbergh; and the Paris-set romantic comedy “The Cosmopolitans,” starring Adam Brody.