The Tick (2001) is the perfect weekend binge — and it's streaming for free

'Gravity is a harsh mistress'

Every version of The Tick is excellent. The original comic book series created by Ben Edlund is a darkly funny satire of superhero comics. The Saturday morning cartoon is equal parts silly and smart. The most recent Prime Video series added some unexpected heart to the franchise that worked surprisingly well. And there’s one more version that, because of its short run, its razor-sharp writing, and its utterly perfect casting of the Tick, makes for a perfect (and currently free on Tubi) weekend binge.

The first live-action adaptation of The Tick premiered in November 2001, and, like every version of The Tick, it’s about a big, dumb, blue bug-suit wearing superhero who is incredibly strong and nigh-invulnerable. He is sworn to protect the City — only ever called “the City” — along with his sidekick Arthur, a perfectly normal man with a flying suit and superheroic aspirations.

What makes this take on The Tick special, though is what it did differently from the rest. Rather than just a parody of the superhero genre, The Tick (2001) was as much, if not more about what superheroes do in their downtime. Not in a "Clark Kent at the Daily Planet” kind of way, but in kind of an absurdist way that often saw the Tick and his pals hanging out, in full costume, at a coffee shop.

It was like The Tick by way of Seinfeld and that was entirely intentional, as the guy who developed the series was Seinfeld writer Larry Charles. Charles sought to focus more on the strength of the characters themselves and their own idiosyncrasies as opposed to the superhero parody aspect. Also, in an era where big-budget special effects weren’t commonly used on TV shows, the show couldn’t really pull off superhero spectacle in the way the Prime Video version of The Tick would years later. That restriction worked to Charles’ benefit as it leaned into his strengths as a sitcom writer and Patrick Warburton’s strengths as a comedic actor.

At 6’ 3” and broad-shouldered, Warburton immediately had the size to play the Tick. And as he made clear on Seinfeld in the role of Elaine’s boyfriend David Puddy, he definitely had the comedic chops to play a convincing moron. But different from Puddy and from other takes on the Tick was that Warburton played him as not just stupid, but as a baby, which gave the character a sense of wonder, curiosity, and fundamental misunderstanding about the city he’s sworn to protect.

The combination of Warburton’s baby-like Tick and Charles’ more domestic approach to the material led to some wonderfully conceptual episodes. For example, in an episode where Arthur gets a girlfriend, the Tick is not only hilariously jealous, but he also learns about what love is altogether. In another episode, the Tick learns about the concept of death for the first time.

Key to this approach of the Tick, according to Warburton himself, was the character’s lack of backstory. “His past is a mystery,” said Warburton in a 2009 interview with About.com. “So everything that he looks at or perceives can be brand new, and he can get really, really excited and intrigued by something that’s just a commonality for everybody else, that’s humorous. He’s like a child; everything’s new. So you just bring that attitude to him, a childlike attitude of discovering things.”

The Tick has always been a character that is light on backstory, which is understandable since he started out as the newsletter mascot for a chain of Boston-area comic book stores in 1986. In both the cartoon and the Prime Video series, it never came up at all. In the original comic books, we learn he’s a guy who escaped from a mental institution, but we never find out his name or any other information about how he got there in the first place. In the 2001 series, the first episode begins with the Tick as the sworn protector of a desolate bus station in the middle of the desert where his biggest villain is a malfunctioning vending machine. Beyond that, we know nothing about him or how long he’s been there. The bus station operator (who hates him) then tricks the Tick into taking a bus into the City, so he then becomes the sworn protector of the City instead. This approach allowed the Tick to be not just big, dumb, and destructive, but he was also unfamiliar with the city and the normal lives of humans, which made the baby-like, fish-out-of-water approach really work.

Despite its funny writing and an utterly perfect leading man, The Tick was canceled by Fox after airing just eight episodes (only nine were produced). The series was never a ratings hit, which Warburton blamed on a lack of promotion by Fox. It also aired on Thursdays, opposite Survivor and NBC’s “Must See TV” comedy lineup, making for some pretty stiff competition.

Years later, it seemed like Warburton hadn’t gotten over the cancellation as he, along with The Tick creator Ben Edlund, spent years trying to revive the show. Eventually he succeeded in getting a new take greenlit by Prime Video, but Prime decided that, while they wanted The Tick, they didn’t want him, so he was replaced by Peter Serafinowicz (who was also very good, but not as definitive as Warburton).

"I had taken it out and sold it then Amazon didn't want me – they wanted it recast, which they did," Warburton told Digital Spy in 2019.

With that decision, the 2001 take on The Tick would forever remain what it has been since the series was released on DVD in 2003: a funny, nine-episode, easily bingeable show about a superhero who successfully battled the forces of evil (excluding Prime Video network executives).

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The Tick (2001) is available to stream on Tubi and the Roku Channel.