M.O.D.O.K. Season One
Head of the family
UK Disney+, streaming now
US Hulu, streaming now Showrunner Jonathan Blum
Cast Patton Oswalt, Aimee Garcia,
Ben Schwartz, Melissa Fumero
Marvel’s Z-listers assemble in this amiably hit and miss stop-motion/cg animation hybrid, which – with a few more naughty words – could sit comfortably on Adult Swim. Sure, Iron Man makes a few appearances, and M.O.D.O.K. is mid-league in Marvel supervillainy, but much of the fun comes in some cameos from the House of Ideas’s sillier bad guys – Angar the Screamer, the Melter and Armadillo among them.
M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing – one of sci-fi’s greatest acronyms) is, if you didn’t know, the one Marvel character Funko has a problem caricaturing – he’s basically 90% head anyway (with teeny, tiny, dangly arms and legs). As in the comics, he’s an evil genius and the, um, head of the criminal organisation AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics – one of sci-fi’s lamest acronyms), who rock a yellow hazmat suit and white wellies look. Unlike in the comics, he’s also married with (weird) children and AIM gets bought out by a trendy tech company, both of which seriously dent his plans to rule the world.
Boasting some starry guest voice work including Jon Hamm, Nathan Fillion, Whoopi Goldberg and Alan Tudyk, incredibly detailed, Easter egg-packed production design and impressive animation (there are at least two seriously exciting fight scenes), there’s a lot to like here.
As a comedy, however, it struggles to feel like more than a load of Robot Chicken sketches strung together. The series is undeniably wickedly funny in places, but for much of this first season it’s a little one-note – and it’s a very in-your-face note. However, some unexpected moments of pathos make things more interesting as the arc plot unfolds in unexpected ways, and the end-of-season cliffhanger is the kind of powerful balance of sci-fi and personal stakes to which serious, live-action science fiction aspires. Dave Golder
Machine Head’s voice is done by putting the actor’s voice through infamous singers’ pitch-correcting software Auto-tune.