"An Unexpected Gem"
A spaceship crash lands near a tiny town in Colorado. The sole occupant survives and makes its way to the lakeside retreat of Dr Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk). The alien kills Harry, throws his body in the lake, and shape shifts to assume his identity. Meanwhile the town doctor is found dead under mysterious circumstances and soon the townsfolk are calling on Harry to take his place. Now Alien Harry has to find his spaceship (still buried beneath the snow), make sure the body of Real Harry isn't found, and learn how to behave like a human, all while trying to achieve the objective he was sent to earth in the first place for.
Based on a Dark Horse comic book, anyone not having read that may find it hard to believe that RESIDENT ALIEN wasn't originally conceived as the very funny comedy that it is, but Alien Harry was originally planned to be a more serious character until Alan Tudyk's audition apparently convinced the production team to go for a more comedic approach.
Not that Tudyk is the only one with the funny lines in this. Creator Chris Sheridan makes sure most of the personable cast gets their fair share of witticisms, right down to the young boy who is the only person in the town who can see the alien as he really is.
Fabulous Films' two disc set (either Blu-ray or DVD) contains all ten episodes of Season 1 of this SyFy channel series, which has already gone to a second season and apparently there's promise of a third. It's a show that takes the fish out of water concept used by movies such as John Carpenter's 1985 STARMAN and runs with it, never missing an opportunity for a funny line or amusing character turn along the way, piling on the incident (by episode four Harry's wife has turned up) to create that rarest of things, a successful television science fiction comedy. Worth splashing out on and let's hope it runs to a few more seasons.
RESIDENT ALIEN Season 1 is out from Fabulous Films on DVD & Blu-ray on Monday 8th August 2022
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