Critic Reviews

This excellent sci-fi series, which cleverly blends comedy and drama with a murder mystery, is a blast. “Resident Alien” is laugh-out-loud funny, full of heart-felt moments and, much like Harry himself, surprisingly sincere. It’s the first must-watch show of 2021.

Among all the secret weapons inhabiting “Resident Alien” the principal one is Mr. Tudyk. ... “Resident Alien” isn’t always laugh-out-loud funny—there’s a murder case at the center of it, after all—but it’s got a good sense of how much nonsense people will listen to before they start blaming the person they’re talking to. And how much nonsense they’re willing to serve up.

Given the twists and turns, there's always the risk that Resident Alien could begin to exhaust its premise; still, if the writers can sustain the creative orbit established by its opening batch of episodes, it looks like the kind of series that could extend its stay indefinitely.

The show is off to a great start. ... Tudyk’s performance makes Resident Alien work, but there’s a quirky-enough world around Alien Harry that the show should be more than a one-note joke.

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.

While the world of Patience is humming along pretty well in Season 4 of Resident Alien, we’re still here to watch Alan Tudyk do his thing.

If this is the last season for Resident Alien, everything in the set up of Season 4 points to it going down as one of those all-timer sleeper shows that found the audience flowers that it deserves.

Resident Alien proves capacious in its depiction of Harry’s assimilation, too, as his callousness gradually gives way to empathy, resulting in poignant moments that ground his odyssey in deeply human experience.

The combination of Tudyk’s otherworldly performance and Sheridan’s execution of stories running on multiple, parallel tracks make “Resident Alien” a welcome addition to the dwindling ranks of scripted basic cable originals.

The writing isn’t quite of that caliber [“Northern Exposure”]—it too often goes for easy character beats instead of nuanced storytelling—but this is a consistently likable show at a time when people could use something comfortable and easy.