The Tick

Our Review

The best live action superhero comedy ever made, canceled twice because the universe is a coward. Amazon’s take on Ben Edlund’s big blue doofus is surprisingly philosophical: Peter Serafinowicz’s Tick is a cheerful cosmic amnesiac who may be a coping mechanism given flesh, assigned to protect The City, and Griffin Newman’s Arthur, a terrified accountant with a flying suit and a dead family’s trauma, is the show’s real protagonist. Their odd couple dynamic (the Tick as externalized courage, Arthur as the anxious man learning to fly) gives the comedy a genuine emotional floor.

Season 1 is a near perfect 12-episode run with one of TV’s best cold opens (a competent superhero team getting slaughtered in the pilot). Season 2 deepens the mythos (Dangerboat the sentient ship, the bureaucracy of AEGIS) and ends unresolved. Amazon pulled the plug on a cliffhanger, the second time this property died on TV mid flight. Jackie Earle Haley’s Terror is a villain for the ages.

Verdict: Watch it. Spoon!