Rick and Morty: It’s a riot … and all over Szechuan dipping sauce

Rick and Morty, streaming on Netflix.

Rick and Morty.

Can you guess which animated comedy caused riots at McDonald’s outlets across the US this year, counts Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk among its fans and, according to Newsweek, was this year’s top-rated TV comedy ahead of Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and Saturday Night Live?

If you guessed The Simpsons, South Park or Family Guy you’d be wrong.

And if you haven’t heard of Rick and Morty, I envy you the pleasure of experiencing for the first time the strange and wonderful universe created by Justin Roiland (Adventure Time) and Dan Harmon (Community), with seasons one to three available to stream now. (The riots, it must be explained, were in relation to a historical Szechuan dipping sauce referenced in the show; McDonald’s jumped on the bandwagon with a limited re-release of sauce but was overwhelmed by ardent fans.)

The series follows the intergalactic adventures of an alcoholic scientist named Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty. The show’s creators frequently cause them to break the fourth wall and have a deliberately loose and perhaps even sarcastic approach to nomenclature and catchphrases such as “wubba lubba dub dub” and “get schwifty” and/or “squanchy”. Don’t forget to wait for the post-credits scenes, invariably the funniest bits.

The other animated highlight of the year was Bojack Horseman, a black comedy on Netflix about a horse from a famous fictional sitcom in the 1990s called Horsin’ Around who now has to deal with his ennui. It’s great, but a few marks must be deducted for its Hollywood insider preoccupations.