ARE we living in a golden age of animation? Usually, when a column starts with a question the answer is no. But I’m going to throw in an early spoiler and say that things are pretty good right now.

This is particularly the case in the US which — for better or worse — still has significant cultural hegemony over our telly watching habits, be it through imports or streaming services.

With the likes of Rick and Morty, Bob’s Burgers, Archer, BoJack Horseman and the evergreen South Park, we may never have had it so good.

Like so much, it all started with the Simpsons. If you look back at past winners of animated Emmys, the nominees list were dominated by the Smurfs, Charlie Brown and Garfield. Christmas specials, the one time when it was vaguely acceptable for adults to watch cartoons, played a big role in making them popular.

Then The Simpsons came along.

Saying that the show is not what it used to be has become a meme in itself. But let’s pause briefly to remember how rich, clever and era-defining it was for the first eight seasons or so, before it descended into a postmodern mulch of guest star appearances and “shocking” plot twists. Early Simpsons is worthy of Dickens. Current Simpsons is worthy of Dignitas.

Still, it did its job and along with the animated Batman series, the dark noir Duckman and the disturbing Ren and Stimpy, a whole generation grew up with the understanding that animated characters don’t have to be two-dimensional.

Adult Swim — in the US, what the Cartoon Network becomes once the kids had gone to bed — took this basic concept to deliciously strange places. They bought up terrible old Hannah Barbera characters wholesale and put them in ludicrous situations.

So Space Ghost, a pompous ’60s superhero, got his own chat show, alien cat villain Brack became the backward star of a parodic golden age sitcom and Birdman became Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

All glorious stoner fare. But Adult Swim’s offerings have grown in sophistication in latter years. Their current stars, Rick and Morty are a cut above even Aqua Team Hunger Force.

Following the adventures of a suburban mad scientist and his anxiety-ridden adolescent grandson, Rick and Morty is fast, funny, psychedelic and frequently brutal. If you can imagine Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy blended with Futurama and Ren & Stimpy, you’re half way there.

The freedom of animation is something that Dan Harmon, the show’s co-creator, understands all too well, given his trials and tribulations on the cult live-action comedy Community.

Not only would its “high concept sci-fi rigmarole” be almost impossible to do as a live-action show — the budget on alien worlds and bizarre extra-terrestials alone would add up to the GDP of a small country — it gets away with plenty of stuff that would raise network honcho’s corporate eyebrows if presented in the context of a standard series.

It might be a crazy show about a genius with a portal gun, bouncing between thousands of alternative realities, but these are also characters whose adventures have consequences.

So we see Morty, a nervous 14-year-old with a desire for a quiet life, pointing his teenage sister to the hole in the garden in which he buried the corpse of his own parallel self after one such jaunt didn’t go quite according to plan.

And Rick himself, the utterly amoral scientist, permanently drunk and furious with the half-wits that surround him, is a strangely loveable character for someone who would happily leave you marooned and dying on an alien world if it furthers one of his nefarious schemes.

In an increasingly frantic world, the show does a good job of reminding us of the uncaring nature of our vast and complex universe.

We might as well have a few laughs along the way.