Amazon’s latest original pilots now streaming, including ‘The Tick’

Want to sit in judgement of original content and decide its fate? Now’s your chance — Amazon’s latest slate of original TV show pilots is available for streaming, and it includes I Love Dick, a Kevin Bacon-starrer adapted from the novel by Chris Kraus; The Tick, yet another incarnation of the comic character who first graced TV in a much-beloved three-season animated series on Fox; and Jean-Claude Van Johnson, a vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme doing more post-modern self-depiction following the 2008 film JVCD in which he did a similar thing.

If you haven’t been keeping up with Amazon’s original video efforts, the e-commerce company produces a slate of original pilots on a regular basis, and essentially has them battle one another for full production pick-up, using the feedback of streamers as the deciding factor on whether or not they get made.

Past pilot season rollouts have been busier affairs; the most recent included eight original series, which debuted not too long ago (in June). This three-show lineup keeps things more focused, and might be a sign that Amazon is turning its attention to quality over quantity. It’s definitely keeping things thematically tight, though — all of these are half-hour comedies, whereas previous pilot seasons have included a mix of different genres of shows.

Reviews on Amazon show high marks for each show so far, with The Tick way out front in terms of the sheer volume of reviews amassed so far. But while it may be less obscure in intermediary steps between pilots, audiences and full productions runs, the shows Amazon takes to series don’t always add up in terms of the tale of the tape via reviews and views (Bezos wants some Emmys, too). Still, it’s kind of fun even if you’re not directly deciding the final fate of any of the programming, and there’s free original content involved, so go check it out.