The Strangerers

The Strangerers
Title screen
Genre	Comedy drama Science fiction
Created by	Rob Grant
Written by	Rob Grant
Directed by	Liddy Oldroyd Nick Wood
Starring	Mark Williams Jack Docherty Sarah Alexander Mark Heap Milton Jones Morwenna Banks David Walliams Paul Darrow Doon Mackichan
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	9
Production
Camera setup	Single-camera setup
Running time	60 minutes (Episode 1) 30 minutes (Episodes 2–9)
Production companies	Absolutely Television Taken for Granted Productions Ltd.
Original release
Network	Sky One
Release	15 February (2000-02-15) – 11 April 2000 (2000-04-11)

The Strangerers is a British television comedy-drama science fiction series written by Rob Grant (best known as co-creator of Red Dwarf ) and was broadcast on Sky One between 15 February and 11 April 2000.

A single series was made with a total of nine episodes (the first being one hour in length and the rest 30 minutes each). The show ended on a cliffhanger but despite this it ended up being cancelled and a second series was never produced. It has not been released on DVD, nor repeated since its original run.

Background

The show was conceived as Sky One's first original comedy series, developed in the wake of the channel losing the broadcasting rights to Friends , which had moved to Channel 4. Sky invested £300,000 per episode and granted the creators full creative autonomy. Creator and writer Rob Grant initially pitched the show to the BBC, but they declined, having recently acquired the rights to broadcast the similar American sci-fi sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun . ^[1]

Plot

The story centres on two alien agents, Cadet Flynn and Pseudo-Cadet Niven. They are incredibly advanced and evolved vegetables on a fact finding mission to Earth, where they take on human form. Their supervisor is accidentally decapitated shortly after arrival, leaving the cadets to fend for themselves. Through the course of the series the aliens discover the intricacies of basic needs, like the eating ritual, the sleeping ritual and how to purchase things, usually doing so in their own idiosyncratic manner.

Their exact whereabouts on Earth is something of a mystery. The society in which they find themselves bears some resemblance to both Britain and America, and there are hints that a totalitarian government is in charge. There are also street gangs parodying those in A Clockwork Orange . Two agents and their apparently psychopathic commander try to capture the aliens. The aliens repeatedly escape, but not without suffering occasional injuries themselves.

Cast

• Mark Williams as Cadet Flynn
• Jack Docherty as Cadet Niven
• Sarah Alexander as Rina
• Mark Heap as Harry
• Milton Jones as The Supervisor
• Morwenna Banks as The Super-Supervisor
• Paul Darrow as C.D.
• David Walliams as Rats
• John Sparkes as Bilbo
• Doon Mackichan as Galdriel
• Meera Syal as Volunteer
• Kulvinder Ghir as Keith
• Mike Hayley as Irius Mann

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date	Viewers (millions)  [2]
1	"Space Cadets"	Liddy Oldroyd	Rob Grant	15 February 2000 (2000-02-15)	0.73
Three aliens arrive on Earth and attempt to blend in with humans, relying solely on outdated information gleaned from early television broadcasts. [3]
2	"Vegetables"	Liddy Oldroyd	Rob Grant	22 February 2000 (2000-02-22)	N/A (<0.68) [a]
3	"Crunchy Munchy"	Liddy Oldroyd	Rob Grant	29 February 2000 (2000-02-29)	N/A (<0.63) [a]
4	"Fargle"	Liddy Oldroyd	Rob Grant	7 March 2000 (2000-03-07)	N/A (<0.74) [a]
5	"Zap Type 'Z'"	Nick Wood	Rob Grant	14 March 2000 (2000-03-14)	N/A (<0.69) [a]
6	"Angels"	Nick Wood	Rob Grant	21 March 2000 (2000-03-21)	N/A (<0.64) [a]
7	"The Streets of Laredo"	Nick Wood	Rob Grant	28 March 2000 (2000-03-28)	N/A (<0.65) [a]
8	"Eyepoppers"	Nick Wood	Rob Grant	4 April 2000 (2000-04-04)	N/A (<0.63) [a]
9	"The Getawaying"	Nick Wood	Rob Grant	11 April 2000 (2000-04-11)	N/A (<0.68) [a]

1. Not reported in the weekly top 10 programmes for Sky One.

International broadcasts

The show was picked up by Australian television subscription service Foxtel and broadcast on The Comedy Channel, who described it as "silly and very funny". ^[4]

See also

• 2000 in British television

References

1. Lucy Barrick (15 February 2000). "Strange days". The Guardian. p. 50.
2. "Weekly top 30 programmes on TV sets (July 1998 – Sept 2018)". BARB. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
3. "Pick of the Day: The Strangerers". Daily Telegraph. 12 February 2000. p. 315.
4. "The Strangerers on The Comedy Channel". Sydney Morning Herald. 15 October 2001. p. 61.

External links

• The Strangerers at IMDb
• Episode 1 on YouTube