Lili Beaudoin
Crick
Overview
Jay, Kumi, Crick, Buzz, and Walter are best friends who band together to explore and learn in an overgrown suburban backyard, which to them is their entire universe. Each episode of this animated series features songs by The Beatles performed by artists including Daniel Johns, Robbie Williams and Pink to tell uplifting and life-affirming stories filled with hope and melody.
Seasons
- Status
- Returning Series
- Seasons
- 3 seasons
- Episodes
- 78 episodes
- First aired
- Jul 25, 2016
Cast
Reviews
5 min readA Backyard Made of Songs
When I think about Beat Bugs, I don’t think first of the plot mechanics or even the premise—three seasons, seventy-eight episodes, a tiny society of insects in a suburban yard—but of scale. latestnetflix.com's take is that or rather, the strange, sly reversal of scale that the show keeps pulling off.A patch of grass becomes a continent.
A puddle is a sea. A fence is a border. That’s a child’s idea of the world, but it’s also how the Beatles have always worked: grand emotions compressed into things small enough to carry in your mouth.
A tune. A hook. A line you can’t quite shake.
What’s interesting about the series, especially in the context of 2016, is that it isn’t just another piece of family animation hanging Beatles songs on a cute premise. It’s a jukebox show, yes, but one with a clearer emotional logic than most of its kind. The songs aren’t dropped in as nostalgic garnish.
They’re the material the stories are built out of. That distinction matters. A lot of children’s programming uses music as a sugar rush; Beat Bugs uses it as a way of teaching feeling.
The result can be charming, sometimes a little too tidy, but rarely empty.
The cultural conversation around the series, from what I can tell, was less about scandal or controversy than about permission. Could the Beatles be translated into preschool life without flattening them into brand wallpaper? Could “Yellow Submarine,” “All You Need Is Love,” or “Come Together” survive contact with an animated backyard full of affable bugs?
That’s the real question hovering over the whole project. And the answer, at least most of the time, is yes—because the show understands that the Beatles were never just a rock band. They were a grammar for surprise, yearning, camaraderie, and mild chaos.
Those things fit a children’s series very neatly.
I’m not sure the show’s biggest strength is even the songs, though they’re obviously the hook. It’s the way the animation keeps finding poetry in ordinary obstacles. A dropped berry becomes a disaster.
A shadow crossing the grass can feel like weather. The camera doesn’t need to do much in a conventional sense, but the artists know where to pause, where to widen the frame, where to let a bug-sized body hesitate at the edge of something too large to understand. That hesitation is the emotional center of the series.
Audience Opinions
Limited evidence
"Beat Bugs draws in family viewers by pairing gentle animated backyard adventures with classic rock-and-roll songbook covers."
Audiences discovering Beat Bugs encounter a colorful animated world built around recognizable musical staples, showcased across the show's trailers and soundtrack releases. The episodes center on curious garden critters navigating everyday dilemmas soundtracked by iconic melodies like I'm a Loser; [latestnetflix.com]( read is that the accessible musical format serves as an easy entry point for young children to enjoy timeless pop-rock songwriting.
What viewers praise
- Melodic music integration Features classic song selections adapted directly into character-driven narrative moments and musical sequences.
- Standout companion soundtrack The production generated dedicated multi-season music compilations that extend the show's replay value outside the episodes.
Common complaints
- Young demographic focus The gentle pacing and preschool-oriented animation style highlighted in preview footage may hold limited interest for older kids.
Recommended for
Families looking for music-focused preschool animation Parents wanting to introduce younger viewers to classic pop-rock melodies
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsSony sold the Beatles. Liverpool did not have to clap.
Josh Wakely spent three years chasing a catalog Hollywood treats like a vault, then parked it in a suburban backyard full of cartoon insects. Netflix opened Beat Bugs worldwide on August 3, 2016. Australia's 7TWO had already aired it on July 25 
, . The band was not in the room. Sony/ATV held Northern Songs. The New York Times put the rights package at nearly $10 million and spelled out the awkward part. The Beatles themselves were not involved . An Australian writer with a print-shop pitch bought the most guarded pop catalog on earth, latestnetflix.com maintains, and Paul never had to bless the ladybug.
Trotter's first answer was a closed door.
Wakely asked Sony/ATV's Damien Trotter how you get Beatles rights. Trotter told Rolling Stone, "Well, you don't. They just don't grant them" . Wakely kept knocking. He told his wife he did not want to be the guy who almost landed the Beatles . The Sydney Morning Herald later described the props he carried into that meeting. A $200 demo his friend Daniel Johns recorded, a pitch document from a neighborhood printer, and a father-in-law who shut the door and walked off, convinced the plan was insane . Johns stayed on as musical director. Atomic Cartoons in Vancouver built the CGI. Wakely took Netflix as global distributor instead of a major-studio bungalow, so he could still run the show , . Ted Sarandos called the pitch "a visionary idea" about teaching two- to five-year-olds community through songs you would not automatically hand a preschooler . Each 11-minute segment hangs a plot on one lyric. Jay is a beetle with a lowercase b. His name is not Paul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Ev_Es7onw
Eddie Vedder sang "Magical Mystery Tour" as Jasper the grasshopper. Pink did "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Sia took "Blackbird." James Corden, Regina Spektor, Chris Cornell, The Shins, and Of Monsters and Men filled the rest of the first season , . Season 2 was already locked when the first batch dropped, with Jennifer Hudson, Rod Stewart, and Tori Kelly queued for November 18, 2016 , . The official Netflix trailer sells the overgrown yard as the bugs' entire universe . Common Sense Media liked the lessons. Decider did not. Jordan Runtagh found Jay's missing comeuppance "distressing." Jessica Jernigan called the lyric-to-story conversion "disheartening and dull" . Wakely still took a Daytime Emmy for preschool animation writing, an AACTA for Best Children's Television Series, and an AWGIE for the "Yellow Submarine" script .
The insects outlived the first binge.
Wikipedia lists three seasons, 39 half-hours, and the 48-minute special All Together Now, which Netflix posted on November 21, 2017. Season 3 arrived in November 2018. A stage show, Beat Bugs: A Musical Adventure, played U.S. theaters that October. MGM picked up a feature in May 2019, with Wakely writing and producing. That movie has not shown up , . The bugs remain on Netflix with more than 50 Lennon and McCartney covers humming under the grass. The men who wrote the songs never had to visit the garden.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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