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My Parents Are Aliens | |
---|---|
Created by | Andy Watts |
Starring | Tony Gardner Carla Mendonça Barbara Durkin Danielle McCormack Alex Kew Charlotte Francis Olisa Odele Stephanie Fearon Keith Warwick Jessica Woods Daniel Feltham Katie Pearson Jake Young Danny Robinson |
Country of origin | United States Canada United Kingdom |
Original languages | English French Scottish Gaelic Welsh |
No. of series | 8 |
No. of episodes | 106 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Running time | 23 minutes |
Production companies | Gracie Films Radical Sheep Productions Yorkshire Television/Granada Yorkshire |
Original release | |
Network | BBC Kids (Canadian English) Vrak (Quebicos French) ITV (CITV) (British English) Scottish Television (Scottish Gaelic) HTV Wales (Welsh) |
Release | 8 November 1999 – 18 December 2006 |
Related | |
Agadam Bagdam Tigdam |
My Parents Are Aliens is a British children's television sitcom that was produced for eight series by Yorkshire Television and aired on ITV from 8 November 1999 to 18 December 2006.
The show primarily follows the lives of three orphaned children called Mel, Josh, and Lucy Barker, and their new foster parents Brian and Sophie Johnson. [1] The children soon discover that the Johnsons are in fact aliens from the planet Valux, who crash-landed on Earth when Brian tampered with the controls of their spaceship. As shown by the opening credits, the house they live in is actually a morphed form of their spaceship. They also have the ability to morph into other people. Brian and Sophie start out with very limited and muddled knowledge of life on Earth, and the children must do their best to help them understand. No one outside the family must ever learn that they are aliens, or they will be taken away for scientific testing, and the Barkers will lose another set of parents. The humour in the programme is considered surreal and sometimes gently subversive. Whilst being a children's show, it occasionally makes reference to rather mature matters, high-brow culture, and complex scientific thinking; and because of this, it has also gained a considerable following of older viewers outside of its intended age range.
Series | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
First aired | Last aired | |||
1 | 6 | 8 November 1999 | 13 December 1999 | |
2 | 10 | 16 October 2000 | 18 December 2000 | |
3 | 10 | 24 September 2001 | 5 October 2001 | |
4 | 13 | 2 September 2002 | 2 December 2002 | |
5 | 13 | 22 October 2003 | 3 December 2003 | |
6 | 20 | 8 November 2004 | 27 December 2004 | |
7 | 20 | 17 October 2005 | 23 December 2005 | |
8 | 14 | 16 September 2006 | 18 December 2006 |
The show was filmed in Studio 4 at The Leeds Studios . A laugh track was added from series 4 onwards, although there were complaints that it spoiled the feel of the show. The last episode of series 7, Thanks for all the Earthworm Custard, was the final one to feature the original regular cast, and concluded ongoing plots from the first seven series.
Despite the conclusive nature of the final episode of series 7, the show returned for an eighth series. The new plot acted as a clean slate for the show, with Brian and Sophie crashing their ship again and taking in a new family of foster children after having their memories of the past seven years erased by Guido, the new avatar of the galactic guidebook. The new family, the Bennetts, were very similar in personality to the Barkers and CJ, and Harry. However the new status quo was not to last long, as in 2006, it was announced by ITV that they were to close its in-house children's production unit, bringing the show to a sudden end following series 8.
The same year, Nickelodeon purchased the rights to make an American version of the series. A pilot script was written; the structure was ostensibly the same as the UK original, with alien parents The Jonses (in place of the Johnsons) adopting three children, the Bishops (the Barkers), with similar characteristics to their UK counterparts: teenager Samantha (Sam) in place of Mel; Brad (Josh) and Shelly (Lucy). A pilot episode was written which, unlike the UK source material, introduced the series by having the Joneses adopting the Bishops on-screen. However, the pilot never entered production and the project was eventually dropped.[ citation needed ]
Series 1 to 7 was repeated regularly on CITV from the channel's launch in 2006 up until late 2017, while series 8 repeats were discontinued by early 2010.[ citation needed ]
Entertainment Rights Distribution handled worldwide distribution rights to the series. [2]
In 2000, a VHS release containing all six Series One episodes was released by Video Collection International and Granada Media.
A single-release DVD containing two episodes from Series 2 and four from Series 3 titled The Best Of was released in 2006 by Right Entertainment/Universal Pictures Video UK. Right/Universal also released Series 1 and 2 in a box-set sold as a bulk-release.
Ceremony | Award | Nominee | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2000 Royal Television Society Awards | Best Children's Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Won [3] |
2001 Children's BAFTA Awards | Best Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Nominated [4] |
2001 Banff Television Festival | Best Children's Program | My Parents Are Aliens | Won |
2001 Royal Television Society Awards | Best Children's Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Won |
2002 Royal Television Society Awards | Best Children's Fiction | My Parents Are Aliens | Won |
2003 Children's BAFTA Awards | Best Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Nominated [5] |
2004 Children's BAFTA Awards | Best Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Nominated [6] |
2006 Royal Television Society Awards | Best Children's Drama | My Parents Are Aliens | Won [7] |
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