Geekerati icon Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Doom Patrol) plays an alien disguised as a small-town doctor who gets roped into solving murders in Resident Alien, a new sci-fi dramedy series coming to Syfy next month—finally. Based on the Dark Horse comic series created by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, the show was supposed to premiere this past summer, but coronavirus, pandemic, yada, yada, yada.

Hogan and Parkhouse started publishing the Resident Alien comics in 2012 as installments of four-issue miniseries, with the sixth and final installment forthcoming. Hogan has said he drew inspiration from Twin Peaks, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and My Favorite Martian. The story involves an alien named Harry who crash-lands on Earth and starts solving murders in the remote town of Patience, Washington, while he waits for rescue.

Harry’s backstory is sprinkled throughout the miniseries in various flashbacks. He is Captain Ha Re, a biologist by training, and his special empathic abilities help him disguise his true appearance from most humans. The exceptions are the young granddaughter of a local mystery writer and Asta Twelvetrees, daughter of a Mohawk shaman, who can only partially see through the disguise and thinks Harry is a visiting spirit. Those empathic abilities also mean Harry can tell if someone is lying, so when someone in town is murdered in the first installment (“Welcome to Earth!”), he knows the police have arrested the wrong man and sets out to find the true killer.

For the adapted series, showrunner Chris Sheridan (Family Guy, Titus) has moved the setting to Colorado, although the fictional town is still called Patience. The rest of the cast includes Sara Tomko (Sneaky Pete) as Asta Twelvetrees, Corey Reynolds (Murder in the First) as Sheriff Mike Thompson, Elizabeth Bowen (Fargo, Upload) as Deputy Liv Baker, Levi Fiehler (Mars) as the mayor of Patience, Ben Hawthorne, and Alice Wetterlund (People of Earth) as D’Arcy, a former Olympic snowboarder who’s now part of the ski patrol (and apparently likes to fire mortars in her spare time).

Per the official premise:

Resident Alien follows Harry, an alien played by Alan Tudyk (Rogue One, Firefly) that crash lands on Earth and passes himself off as a small-town human doctor. Arriving with a secret mission, Harry starts off living a simple life… but things get a bit rocky when he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes he needs to assimilate into his new world. As he does so, he begins to wrestle with the moral dilemma of his mission and asking the big life questions like: “Are human beings worth saving?” and “Why do they fold their pizza before eating it?”

The trailer opens with Harry being asked to check out the body of a murder victim, which he finds quite exciting, because it’s just like Law and Order (“chung-chung!”). His odd behavioral tics raise eyebrows—and his attempt at laughter is downright unsettling—but he might be just the right alien-disguised-as-a-man to take on the seemingly idyllic town’s dark underbelly.

Resident Alien debuts on Syfy on January 27, 2021.

Listing image by YouTube/SYFY

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1729811