First broadcast: 1996
Creators: Bonnie and Terry Turner
Starring: John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Episodes: 138
The lowdown: Dick (Lithgow) is the High Commander of an investigative alien team sent to Earth on a mission to learn everything about humans and their "advanced civilisation".
Armed with sharp minds and a nasty habit of always telling the truthe, Dick, Sally (Johnston), Tommy (Gordon-Levitt) and Harry (French Stewart) set about their task by integrating into their local community.
It's a hilarious take on how aliens could look at all the injustices and absurdities of human life and America in general with a simple, childlike logic.
Memorable moment: In the episode Fifteen Minutes of Dick, Sally beats up Luke Skywalker himself, actor Mark Hamill, in a restaurant. As a result of her temper tantrum, she becomes a celebrity and comic hijinks ensue when they all try to deal with her new fame.
Trivia: In the very first episode William Shatner, playing The Big Giant Head, talks about a horrible experience he had aboard an airplane and Dick shouts: "So did I!" This is an inside joke about an episode from The Twilight Zone called Nightmare at 20,000 Feet in 1963 where Shatner played the lead role. In a bizarre twist, Lithgow played the lead role in the very same story during 1983's film Twilight Zone: The Movie.
