By Mike Hale, The New York Times - Aug. 28, 2014

Playing catch-up with Netflix is grueling business. Amazon posted five new online pilots aimed at adults in February and ordered full seasons of four of them in March. Now, before any of those shows have arrived, five more pilots are being posted Thursday on Amazon Instant Video.

Like the February batch, this group consists of two hourlong dramas and three half-hour comedies and involves major names like Whit Stillman, Marc Forster and David Gordon Green. And again, over all, the comedies are better. Perhaps the prestige associated with outlets like HBO, AMC and Netflix still draws better dramatic projects. Here’s a rundown of the latest Amazon pilots, from best to worst.

RED OAKS Set at a suburban New Jersey country club in 1985, Mr. Green’s pilot is not a sendup of 1980s coming-of-age comedies or even a tribute to them, but a surprisingly straightforward extension of the genre. It’s as if the spirits of John Hughes, Harold Ramis and the young Richard Linklater had all gotten together to consult. Craig Roberts stars as David, a college student spending his summer as the assistant tennis pro under the tutelage of the club’s paunchy stud, Nash (a funny Ennis Emmer). Providing some ’80s flavor are Jennifer Grey, as David’s mom; Paul Reiser, as the club’s alpha male; and an abundance of female toplessness.

THE COSMOPOLITANS Mr. Stillman’s first television-length project stars Adam Brody (“The O.C.”) and the newcomer Jordan Rountree as Americans living in Paris whose only discernible occupations are falling in love and crashing high-class parties. It’s Henry James with the nutritional value of a Ladurée macaron: Evanescent or perhaps just wispy, it seems to melt out of your mind as you’re watching it, and it’s hard to imagine that it could be turned into a series. But it’s quite amusing, especially at the beginning, and not as arch as you might expect.

HAND OF GOD Ranking this as the better of the two dramas is a coin flip. Mr. Forster (“World War Z,” “Quantum of Solace”), also going short-form for the first time, directed from a script by Ben Watkins (“Burn Notice”) that’s almost comically overheated. Ron Perlman plays a corrupt judge who goes off the deep end after his son attempts suicide. He starts to believe that God is leading him to the people who drove his son to desperation, and, of course, he may be right. There are also an unsolved rape and a shady construction project involved in this Southern California noir, which recalls the novels of Ross Macdonald but primarily plays like an attempt to pack every cliché of the grim, cable crime drama into one hour.

HYSTERIA The veteran television producer Shaun Cassidy (“Invasion”) is behind this drama that combines the contagion thriller with the Internet paranoia thriller. When girls in Austin, Tex., have unexplained seizures that then spread to the general population, a neurologist (Mena Suvari) working on the case begins to suspect that the affliction is being spread through social media. Yes, that viral video could actually be viral. With references to witch hunts (the opening titles include images of Joseph McCarthy) and earnest dialogue like “What if, because of the way we communicate now, you don’t need to know someone to feel their pain?,” it’s too contrived and on-the-nose to be particularly scary or entertaining.

REALLY Written and directed by and (unfortunately) starring Jay Chandrasekhar, this noncomedy feels like a laboratory experiment: Just how off-putting can a show be and still maintain the semblance of entertainment? To Mr. Chandrasekhar’s credit, you can recognize and acknowledge the truths he presents about the compromises, routines and animosities of 30-something married life — the seriousness of snoring has probably never been presented this baldly in a sitcom — but the glumness and suppressed anger outweigh the realism. When Neil LaBute seems fun in comparison, you’ve got a problem. Sarah Chalke, Selma Blair and Luka Jones do good work playing members of the show’s four entwined suburban Chicago couples.