Streaming is no longer the future, it’s the present. When was the last time you got hooked on a show that wasn’t on Netflix, Amazon or Now TV?

While regular telly does still have its unmissable hits (hello Sherlock and Great British Bake Off), Netflix et all have given us the likes of Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards.

Amazon Prime’s not inconsiderable successes have included award winners and critical winners such as Mr Robot, Transparent, Preacher and the upcoming Grand Tour by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

But first, and for drama heads rather than petrol heads, comes The Collection.

From writer and showrunner Oliver Goldstick, the man behind Ugly Betty and Pretty Little Liars, it is a tense and twisting drama set in an exclusive fashion house in post-war Paris.

It’s ostensibly a family drama but episode one alone gives us murder, sibling rivalry, class and culture clashes, romance, treachery, deceit, a Nazi hangover and lots of dark secrets to be revealed.

Richard Coyle (Coupling, Crossbones) leads the cast as visionary designer Paul Sabine.

At the show’s launch at Amazon Fashion Studios in London, Coyle said: “He is a brilliant businessman, I think he is a gangster in some ways and a romantic and a thug. He is a street kid and I think that is one of the interesting things about him.

“He has reinvented himself. He grown up on the streets and he has pulled himself and his family out of the gutter and he has made the house, this label, from nothing.

“He is incredibly resourceful, incredibly driven, ambitious, ferocious. There is a lot of secrets in the closet behind him.”

Goldstick added: “The skeletons wear the best clothes when they come out of the closet.”

The Collection is a US-British-French collaboration with a predominantly Brit cast, which also includes Kent actor Tom Riley (Kill Your Friends) Paul Sabine’s mercurial brother Claude. It is visually stunning, with predictably gorgeous costumes and some filming in Paris but mostly in Swansea.

And while the season opener throws up so many questions, be prepared for things to get very twisted and fractured as the series rolls on.

Goldstick said: “Part of my attraction to this project is that we don’t get to do all our episodes before we start filming in America. I’ve been doing it for 25 years.

“This is the chance to write a novel. It feels like a prologue, I know I get to write a second and third and this is all going to build and we can take our time.”

“We have no licence to take our time in the States. It is a summer blockbuster mentality of writing a television show and everything has to be that first episode.”

He added: “There’s going to be a meteoric success for this family and if you already are fractured I don’t think success can actually heal all those wounds. I think it can exacerbate things and make things worse.”

Amazon Prime Video’s new original series, The Collection, will be available to Prime members in the UK from Friday, September 2.

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