Whatâs on TV This Week: âSnowpiercerâ and âResident Alienâ
âSnowpiercerâ returns on TNT. And Alan Tudyk stars in a new comedy series on Syfy.
Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs in âSnowpiercer.âCredit.David Bukach/TNT
Jan. 25, 2021
Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 25-Jan. 31. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
SNOWPIERCER
9 p.m. on TNT. Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly star in this science-fiction thriller series, based on both Bong Joon Hoâs sci-fi film of the same name and on the series of French graphic-novels that inspired that film. All three share a biting social commentary and a post-apocalyptic setting: A train circling a frozen earth ravaged by a climate calamity, carrying a population of human survivors who are divided by class. The first season of the TV series introduced a
The fictional town of Patience, Colorado is to quote the
South Park movie from 1999 a “quiet mountain town.” It’s a picturesque slice of Americana surrounded by snow-capped mountains, crystal clear lakes…and an alien pretending to be a human physician.
In other words, it’s the perfect setting for SYFY’s
Resident Alien adaptation, which didn’t shoot in Colorado. “In real life, it was based here in Vancouver. That’s where 90 percent of the filming took place,” location manager Ken Brooker tells SYFY WIRE. “It’s where we had our stages; we had two sound stages and a handful of locations. We shot 10 episodes, so on average, each episode probably had about a dozen or so locations within it.”
It s less than a week until the new comedy (with some drama)
Resident Alien lands on SYFY so the cast got together for some out-of-this-world trivia to celebrate. The live-action adaptation of the Dark Horse comic of the same name starring Alan Tudyk as alien-in-human-form, Harry Vanderspeigle, would normally get a big public press launch, maybe with some aliens on a red carpet or a big space ship faux crash-landing on Hollywood Boulevard. But in keeping with our still socially distant reality, things had to get a bit creative for 2021.
The question being: How do you welcome a new series into the pantheon of sci-fi and alien related works while honoring the genre as a whole? Well, you hold a sci-fi-centric trivia event hosted by trivia pro and 12-time Jeopardy champion Austin Rogers to test some geek journalists and the show s stars on their knowledge.
Firefly), Steve the Pirate (
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), and Mr. Nobody (
Doom Patrol), to name a few but never as No. 1 on a series call sheet.
That s finally being remedied by
Resident Alien, in which Tudyk embodies an alien who s crash-landed on Earth and assumes the body of a rural Colorado doctor Harry Vanderspeigle. All he wants is to look for a lost piece of his spaceship in peace, but Harry is conscripted by the local cops to help them solve a murder that s happened in town. That means mingling with the enemy and trying to look like his Harry belongs with other humans and on this planet, which is exactly up Tudyk s alley.
Everything You Need to Know About Resident Alien (Explainiac w/ Dan Casey)
Everything You Need to Know About Resident Alien (Explainiac w/ Dan Casey)
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Related Videos Published Jan 21 2021 The town of Patience is getting a new resident! Resident Alien, based on the Dark Horse Comic series of the same name, is an all-new series heading to SYFY this January. Dan Casey breaks down everything you need to know before the series premiere on January 27th.
From the dynamic duo of Amblin Entertainment and Chris Sheridan comes Resident Alien, the Alan Tudyk-starring science fiction, murder mystery, doctor dramedy Earth needs right now. Don’t miss the series premiere, landing Wednesday January 27th at 10/9c on SYFY.