New not-quite-TV: 'High Castle,' 'Jessica Jones' and 'Art of More'

* THE ART OF MORE. Thursday, Crackle.

* THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Friday, Amazon.

* MARVEL'S JESSICA JONES. Friday, Netflix.

Some of the best TV shows this fall aren't on television, at least not automatically.

To see all three of the major streaming shows premiering this week, you would need an Amazon Prime account - yes, the one with two-day free shipping - for "The Man in the High Castle," a Netflix subscription for "Marvel's Jessica Jones" and the willingness to sit through online commercials for "The Art of More," on subscription-free Crackle (available at Crackle.com or through a number of web-enabled devices and set-top boxes).

They're all, to some degree, worth the trouble.

The best of the three, Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle," premieres Friday with a 10-episode season. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's Hugo Award-winning novel, it takes place in 1962, in an alternate reality in which the U.S. lost World War II to the Germans and Japanese, who now occupy the East and West coasts, respectively.

Let's just say that Don Draper might not recognize either place.

Created by Frank Spotnitz ("The X-Files") and produced by Ridley Scott, the show depicts both a nascent resistance movement - as well as the overwhelming forces arrayed against it - while imagining a world in which the Germans and Japanese, once allies, see their interests increasingly diverging.

Alexa Davalos ("Mob City") stars as Juliana Crain, a San Franciscan who's drawn into the resistance after an unexpected discovery, and who, on a secret mission to the wild West of the Rocky Mountain States, encounters another young messenger, Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank).

Left behind in San Francisco: Frank Frink (Rupert Evans), Juliana's boyfriend, whose Jewish grandfather puts him at constant risk of being turned over to the Nazis by the Japanese.

Rufus Sewell plays an American Nazi named John Smith, a commanding officer in the SS whose "Father Knows Best" home life stands in chilling contrast to his work days, which routinely involve torture.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is Pacific States trade minister Nobusuke Tagomi, a decent man who finds himself with a terrible secret.

"The Man in the High Castle" has no trouble building and maintaining tension. Honestly, it gave me nightmares. Missing, or at least muted a bit in the four episodes I've seen, though, was the sense I had from the book of how life, and even personality, could be shaped by occupation over time, rendering resistance less and less likely.

If the show's view of a past that didn't happen is more frightening than any of the dystopian futures we've visited lately, it may be because Dick and Spotnitz each extrapolate from horrors that demonstrated that we humans can be more menacing than any zombies.

"The Man in the High Castle" isn't just saying that the Holocaust could happen again. It's asking us to acknowledge that it could have continued here. And to imagine that it never stopped.

Netflix's comic-book universe continues to expand with the addition on Friday of 13 episodes of "Marvel's Jessica Jones," which, like the earlier "Daredevil," is aimed at an adult audience.

Translation: Athletic sex, un-cartoonish violence and not a cape in sight.

Krysten Ritter ("Breaking Bad") stars as rumpled, grumpy private investigator Jessica Jones, a onetime superhero who's sidelined herself for reasons that will gradually become clear.

Ritter's so much fun in PI mode that I could probably have waited longer than I did to find out exactly why Jessica's no longer available for Supergirl-style shenanigans, but then I was curious to see David Tennant ("Doctor Who"), who plays Kilgrave, the very Big Bad in Jessica's story, emerge as more than a voice in her head.

Rachael Taylor co-stars as Trish Walker, a radio host who's Jessica's oldest friend, and Carrie-Anne Moss, as a lawyer who's not very friendly, but occasionally useful.

Mike Colter ("The Good Wife") plays a local bar owner who'll be knocking heads, and maybe more, with Jessica.

Smartly adapted by Melissa Rosenberg ("Twilight"), "Jessica Jones" doesn't require an advanced degree in comics history.

Marvel fans will know that the show, like "Daredevil," takes place some time after the Battle of New York (in which a chunk of that city got trashed and the world learned of the existence of "gifted" people among us). Those who've never seen a single "Avengers" movie won't have trouble keeping up and may appreciate, as I did, a human-scale story where character development doesn't take a back seat to special effects.

If you've ever wondered how a genuine Van Gogh or Renoir would look like over the fireplace, Crackle's "The Art of More" might convince you to save a few hundred million and go with a print instead.

Because the auction world depicted in the Sony-backed streaming network's first hourlong drama is not a place to inspire confidence in the genuineness of any article.

Christian Cooke ("Magic City") plays Graham Connor, an art lover from a blue-collar background who blackmails his way into a job with an elite auction house but who nevertheless seems a little disappointed to find he's not the only one who's crossed a line.

Dennis Quaid and Cary Elwes play wealthy collectors whose possessions may not all have come to them through legal channels but whose business is important to Graham's bosses. Kate Bosworth is a representative of a rival auction house who's at least as eager to lure Quaid's character to her father's firm as Graham is to keep that from happening.

The characters, including Graham, aren't always as unique, subtle or well-drawn as the works they're dealing in, but it's a world most of us know only from the occasional headline on an outsized sale, and the four episodes (of 10) I've seen left me wanting more of "More."

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