Small town America is unknowingly playing host to a crash-landed extra-terrestrial, who’s nicked the identity of a (now dead) fisherman on his humble mission to wipe out humanity.
We know, this isn’t an entirely new premise. But off he goes on his merry, murderous way, learning the lingo via Law & Order reruns and palling up with locals to figure out how humans interact, all the while clinging on to his disguise as the local doctor through questionable healthcare practices – but then again, this is America – and plotting to murder the mayor’s kid, who for some reason can see right through his disguise to the scaly blue beneath.
As you’ve probably gathered by this point, the show isn’t particularly serious and you won’t finish it feeling like you’ve learned a worldly, life changing lesson. But in a way, that’s the fun of it. It’s a pretty charming comic companion to the winter nights, and avoids all that super-self-aware stuff we see in most modern comedies.
It’s simple and silly, and if you ask us, it’s all the better for it.
Lucy Mangan in The Guardian thinks this is just what the (alien) doctor ordered, saying, “Resident Alien knows what it is doing and does it with admirable sincerity. It deploys well-worn tropes without cynicism and plays with others without winking exhaustingly at its audience.” Robert Lloyd of The LA Times enjoyed the show, saying: “I thoroughly enjoyed the seven episodes (out of 10) available for review. I smiled, I laughed, I cared.” The Times’s Carol Midgley wasn’t as convinced, though. She admits “it was funny in parts,” but thinks the series “suffers from improbability issues.”
First shown January 2021. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image, or by clicking here.
