Even as streaming monsters like Netflix have revolutionized the ways we watch television over the last decade, Syfy has continued to chug along, powered by genre series like “The Expanse,” “The Magicians,” “Z Nation,” and the ongoing “Chucky.” That also makes it the perfect home for an oddball show like “Resident Alien,” which casts Tudyk as an extraterrestrial who’s hell-bent on invading Earth and exterminating humanity, only to crash-land in the podunk town of Patience, Colorado. Assuming the identity of the local doctor Harry Vanderspeigle, the planet’s would-be conqueror struggles to uphold his disguise (it doesn’t help that he learned how to behave like a human by watching “Law & Order” reruns), all the while growing fonder of the people around him and coming to realize that some of them might just be worth saving.
Tudyk is himself no stranger to niche live-action genre shows, having previously starred in “Firefly” and “Doom Patrol” (also, justice for his role in the short-lived “Powerless,” a workplace sitcom about non-superpowered individuals in the DC Universe who specialize in developing products to protect civilians from being killed in the never-ending battles between superheroes and supervillains). He’s joined in the “Resident Alien” cast by Sara Tomko as Asta Twelvetrees, Patience’s head nurse and a Native American woman with a pretty tragic backstory, and iconic Indigenous American actor Gary Farmer (“Dead Man,” “Smoke Signals,” “Reservation Dogs”) as Dan Twelvetrees, Asta’s adopted father and a Vietnam War vet who owns the local eatery, Joe’s Diner.