The best “new” TV series of 2001 (thus far) is a leftover from 1999 that just happens to completely outdo that overblown A.I. movie in regards to questioning the nature of humanity-vs.-machines.

It’s a cartoon on the Fox Kids schedule, The Big Guy and Rusty.

The show’s origin lies with a graphic novel made in the mid-’90s for Portland comics giant Dark Horse, by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow. Miller (who’s often credited with the “darker” characterization of Batman that inspired that figure’s movies) and Darrow had collaborated since the late ’80s on sullen, violent, and stunningly-drawn titles such as Hard Boiled.

The Big Guy was a slight departure from the established Miller-Darrow formula. It was set in a bright, futuristic urban environment modeled on latter-day Japanese anime films. Its heroes (inspired by those of the early Japanese cartoons Gigantor and Astroboy) were real heroes, not gruff antiheroes (albeit more heavily armed, and more prone to retaliatory vengeance, than their wholesome precursors).

The Sony-owned Columbia Tristar Television bought the animation rights in 1995. During its four-year development period, executive producer Richard Raynis kept Darrow’s character and background designs but tossed most of Miller’s plot. Raynis and his team concocted a new premise for the characters, one that could support a strong central cast while allowing subplots and conflicts to unfold among multiple episodes.

So as the TV version starts, the Big Guy has already been defending Earth from alien invaders for 10 years. He’s an imposingly huge grey robot with an immobile “face,” a booming voice (spouting patriotic cliches), and giant arms filled with, well, giant arms (missiles, bombs, guns). He’s the oldline military-industrial America strutting its might and heft.

But only the Big Guy’s support team knows he’s not a “real” robot but just a big metallic suit, piloted by one Lt. Dwayne Hunter. Dwayne’s a soft-spoken, unassuming pilot who, when he’s out of the suit and walking on his own legs, shares none of his alter ego’s bombast.

Rusty, the show’s real protagonist, is a real robot, something the Big Guy’s original designers (a defense-contractor conglomerate whose tower is the tallest building in New Tronic City) have only now been able to accomplish. Rusty has the personality of an enthusiastic boy adventurer, avid to clobber the bad guys but lacking in experience or wisdom. Rusty represents the “new economy” and the high-tech future that seemed so promising in 1999, when the show was produced–high-flying, free-wheeling, but sometimes almost fatally immature.

Rusty adores the Big Guy as a substitute dad, but only knows Lt. Dwayne as the Big Guy’s “chief mechanic.” Lt. Dwayne initially dismisses Rusty as an unfinished technology, but grows to trust and feel for the “Boy Robot,” both when inside and outside the Big Guy suit.

This central relationship, along with those of a strong human supporting cast, carry the series through 26 installments that unfold as chapters in a novel (like the best anime shows). But Fox, desperate for a quick ratings fix in the Pokemon-dominated 1999 cartoon season, dropped TBG&R after only six installments had aired. The network’s been “burning off” the entire series in a spring-and-summer run this year. Its ratings this time have apparently been OK, but the show’s creative staff has dispersed to other projects and a second season is apparently unlikely.

But the shows that were made work well as a complete “work,” with a beginning and end. In between are some episodes that work as stand-alone adventures with foes (and friends) of assorted alien origin, some episodes that explore the relationship between the real robot and the fake one, and some episodes involving a set of recurring villains, the Legion Ex Machina (evil, real robots out to eradicate the human race).

In the last episode, the Big Guy’s original chief designer is seen for the first time. He claims the Big Guy had been “a failure” because it depended on a human pilot; even though the man-in-a-suit had successfully fought off countless bug-eyed alien monsters and destroyed the Legion.

Similarly, Fox treated TBG&R as a failed show. But it’s really a success. At a time when primetime “reality” shows are pulling the lowest common denominator ever lower (even lower than is possible with scripted fiction shows, which must maintain a minimal story credibility to work on a weekly basis), TBG&R is a highest-common-denominator show.

Its premise is full of holes (if the Big Guy is so important to Earth’s survival, why was only one ever built and why does it have only one trained pilot?).

But the characters (even the bad guys) are fully developed, the storylines fully explore the complexities of these characters, the scripts are smart without succumbing to overt “hip” attitude nonsense, and the artwork (all done in traditional cel animation) is often spectacular.

See it while you still can.