Ridley Scott’s billion-dollar franchise finally arrives on the small screen – and it’s gloriously tense and nasty stuff. Plus, the Outlander prequel is beguilingly silly
It’s remarkable that it has taken so long for the xenomorph created by Ridley Scott in Alien to arrive on the small screen. But here it is courtesy of Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley. The sci-fi thriller is set two years before the first film and centres on the crash-landing of a research vessel on Earth – in the middle of a battle between two corporations: pushy upstarts Prodigy and the villainous Weyland-Yutani. Prodigy’s gift to the world is transhumanism, in which human consciousness is implanted into seemingly indestructible bodies. Expect that proposition to be tested by the arrival of extraterrestrial specimens from the doomed spacecraft. The result is a tense, nasty and inventive series.
Disney+, from Wednesday 13 August
