Amazon spent a couple of years trying to make its Citadel spy series take flight, with more than one spin-off now available to view on Prime Video if you’re keen, but a new teaser trailer suggests that it could be moving onto new ideas. That, or it might just be trying to diversify its spy offering.
Whatever the strategy might be, the outcome is Butterfly, a new series starting on Prime Video on 13 August, in just about a month’s time. It stars Daniel Dae Kim and Piper Perabo as a father and daughter reunited afters years in which David, the dad, was forced to maintain secrecy about even being alive.
A whole childhood of thinking your dad’s dead can be a hard burden for anyone, but in this case Perabo’s character has been raised by a mysterious and seemingly evil spy agency. Now her dad’s back from the grave and wants her to leave everything she knows behind to work for him.
From the trailer, it’s pretty clear that he’ll get his wish, but not without some teething problems as he tries to restart a relationship with the daughter he didn’t get to raise. She’s no shrinking violet, either, having been trained in all manner of subterfuge, surveillance, field work and more. So, as the trailer also makes clear, there’s going to be plenty of action once this father-daughter duo get down to work.
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It can feel like every time Prime Video (or any of the other best streaming services) launches a new series like this, there’s a private game going on to see if it’s worthy of becoming a franchise. Of course, you could say that’s true of all TV, but the way the streaming platforms have turned to stats very rapidly after a show launches makes it feel particularly high stakes.
Whether Butterfly has what it takes is hard to say, but I can say that where Citadel always left me pretty cold, with its slightly odd sort of futuristic setting and slightly try-hard vibe. This seems more heartfelt, and having a family story at its heart could help it to stand out a little. If it can nail the basics of its mystery plot, we could be looking at a new hit.
