This comedy from two of the creators of the BBC's excellent Ghosts sitcom (Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond) starts with an interesting idea- what happens once the aliens have invaded and have to rule the planet?
Stewart (Declan Baxter) has no real ambition in life, other than to winner the heart of pub landlord Elodie (Georgia May Foote). When alien race the Gu'un's invade he inadvertently finds himself as the official human liaison. As well as working for Trator (Vicki Pepperdine) and trigger-happy Gordan (Mike Wozniak) and stuck with their dim assistant Greggs (Joe Thomas), Stewart also finds himself helping the resisting Anti Alien Alliance.
The comedy has several different angles. On the one hand there's the simple fun that's had from the aliens being clueless and perplexed by humanity and Earth from wondering why they drive around cars that spit out poison to obsession with paper money. There's also a surprisingly amount of satire here with lots of digs at the Conservatives, Brexit and many of the things the right of British politics have said in recent years. This stuff, often done quite subtly, is really clever and is done excellently. Then weirdly there's a scatological side with jokes about erections and people shitting themselves if they hear the aliens' real names which doesn't add a whole lot and disguises how clever some of the comedy actually is.
The cast are great here. Declan Baxter makes for a great lead but it's the aliens who are most memorable. Joe Thomas pretty much always plays the same character but he's always very good at the dim but loveable friend and it works especially well in this context. It's Mike Wozniak who is the highlight though, managing to deliver some hilarious lines whilst also being quite scary- he's weirdly the most believable character as that horrible bloke who would happily kill you given the chance.
The biggest problem I had with this is the fact the narrative just sort of stops. There's an end to some of the plot points but no proper ending. That's seemingly because this has been treated as a pilot for a potential series which is fine but I still think it should have a bit more of a concrete ending.
I don't think this hits the highs of Ghosts but there is some great stuff here and some of the writing is really clever. It's just a shame that there wasn't a more consistent tone and a proper ending.
[For anyone interested, this is available in the UK on the streaming service UKTV Play and will be repeated on the 'Dave' channel regularly]
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