THE TICK
First broadcast: August 25, 2017
Number of seasons: 2
Showrunner: Romeo Tirone, Wally Pfister, Thor Freudenthal, Lev L. Spiro, Kate Dennis, Sheree Folkson, Rosemary Rodriguez
Main actors: Rosemary Rodriguez, Griffin Newman, Valorie Curry
Synopsis: The Tick is a superhero dressed in blue who teams up with Arthur, a superhero disguised as a moth, but who everyone mistakes for a rabbit! They help the widow, the orphan and the oppressed.
Genesis
It only took me 3 evenings to watch the entire series.The Tick. The series is made up of a first season of 12 episodes and a second of 10 episodes (25 minutes on average per episode), this series immerses us in a universe of superheroes, each more zany than the last. The Tick tells the story of Arthur, an outsider accountant who realizes that his city is in the hands of a supervillain, The Terror, whom he thought was long dead. To fight The Terror, Arthur will join forces in spite of himself with a superhero named The Tick, for worse and for better.
History of the series
This superhero about whom I knew nothing did not appear with Amazon Prime, since the hero in the blue tights dates from the 80s. Created in 1986 by the cartoonist Ben Edlund, The Tick is inspired by superhero comics from the 1960s, with their caricatured characters and absurd situations. Inspired, Ben Edlund will make him a naive, innocent and clumsy hero, who believes in good and justice. A few years later, the author decided to develop the character in a series of comics in 1987.
In 1994, it was the turn of the small screen to take possession of the tick in a cartoon broadcast on Fox. The animated series will be a critical and commercial success. It will be entitled to 3 seasons for a total of 36 episodes.
It was in 2001 that The Tick returned in the form of a television series with the main roles Patrick Warburton (The Disastrous Adventures of the Baudelaire Orphans, Malcolm and Code Quantum) and David Burke (Nashville, Chuck and Bones). We will also find Arthur's boss, played here by Christopher Loyd (Back to the future). It is in this series that Ben Edlund will introduce the character of Arthur Everest, a clumsy and shy accountant who will become the tick's sidekick. The creator of the series wanted to be the most faithful to the comic book. But despite Ben Edlund's good intentions and positive reviews, the series had difficulty finding its audience across the Atlantic and it ended after 9 episodes.
Amazon prime
Looking for several years for a solution to revive The Tick, Ben Edlund approached Amazon Prime. He sees it as an opportunity because superheroes in cinema are booming. This created a demand for original series on this theme. “The Tick” proved to be a wise choice to meet this demand.
The Tick will arrive on Amazon Prime which is the broadcaster and producer with Sony Pictures. We find there in the role of The Tick Peter Serafinowicz, and in the role of Arthur Griffin Newman.
What do I think of it
When I saw the first episodes of the series on Amazon Prime, I thought it was a bad joke. With its Hero Corp humor, kitsch style and costumes, the series seems at first glance a failed attempt to ride the wave of superheroes. But after a few episodes, we remain glued to the chair to follow the wanderings of our two heroes. We don't really know why, we have the impression of a series developed by fans but with a comfortable budget when we see the sophisticated costumes. The antagonists are more caricature than anything else and yet we get carried away. But if we look closer, we can see that this series is the most accomplished of all the adaptations, and perfectly in keeping with its time.
If the first season is based a lot on humor that is a little heavy at times, the end of the first season takes a rather pleasant direction. This will be confirmed in the second season with a slightly better-crafted plot and better-balanced humor. With the end of season 2 open, I think it was planned for her to return for a third season. But the creator, Ben Edlund, announced on Twitter in May 2016 that the series would stay there:
“I am sorry to say that Amazon has chosen not to pursue @TheTickTV. I'm not sorry to say that I love this series, its cast, its story and its message. Destiny demands that my compatriots and I now seek a new home for this series. »
If Ben Edlund does not specify Amazon's motivations for stopping production, we can nevertheless have some clues: The series was expensive to produce (50 million dollars for the first season), Amazon considered in view of the audiences, that it would not be profitable in the long term.
It's a shame because the series received numerous Emmy Award nominations in 2019: One for stunt coordination managed by Chris Centiempo, and another for the main theme. Since the end of the series, Ben Edlund has been looking for solutions to keep his creation going. In 2023, the creator of The Tick published a novel that was praised by fans for its humor and action.
With an annoying season 1 for its omnipresent humor at the expense of the plot, the series managed to raise the bar in season 2 to end in apotheosis with a final episode which leaves us wanting more.
