蜜芽传媒

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell join Naga Munchetty to review Alien: Earth.

Alien: Earth is a prequel set in 2120, two years before the first Alien film, and the franchise’s first story on Earth. When a crashed research ship unleashes a deadly alien threat, rival mega-corporations and a synthetic-human hybrid race to control it, blending corporate intrigue with survival horror.

What do the Must-Watch reviewers make of it all?

Naga: “Is it a Must Watch?”

Scott: “Yes!”

“Our long television drought is over, we’ve got through it.”

“I normally keep notes that I type when I watch a programme…”

Naga: “You sit in bed with food…”

Scott: “No I don’t eat in bed!”

Naga: “So you were saying, you do usually take notes don’t you?”

Scott: “I do normally and then, if I really don’t like a show, I sometimes make more notes, because I work through my head what’s wrong with this…”

Hayley: “Furiously…”

Scott: “When I'm absorbed by a programme, entertained by a programme, or absolutely scared of the living daylights out of a programme, I might write notes later on, or try to get through the scene first.”

“I didn’t write a single note during this programme. Not one, not until maybe two hours later, because this was a show that was so suspenseful, that I had been on the edge of my seat from the off.”

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, I think it does so many things magically well.”

“Normally prequels and sequels, normally feel like they are treading on the success of an original thing… of course Alien made by Ridley Scott absolutely huge film…”

Naga: “Have you seen it?”

Scott: “The original yes, but not for many years, since I was about seventeen and as you know how squeamish I get sometimes."

"It is challenge when you are dealing with prequels or sequels is it’s sort of taking something away from the original or maybe adding too much in terms of mythology, but it becomes inaccessible or maybe having too much complexity, this show doesn’t do any of that, it’s highly accessible, yet still retains a lot of the original themes that make it very Alien-like, like the original film.”

“I think the acting is absolutely sublime, there’s some terrifying sequences, I think the world building is absolutely astounding for a television programme."

"There are some sequences where it feels as if you are the spaceship and you’re flying through about to crash land and you feel so immersed into what’s going on. This show also doesn’t feel cold, because a lot of sci-fi shows can feel incredibly cold, incredibly… sometimes quite distant, whereas this felt very now and real, like it’s set in the future.”

Naga: ”OK, so it’s a definite, big yes from you, Hayley?”

Hayley: “Yes!”

“I love Ridley Scott and Alien is one of my favourite movies. I rewatched it last year when I was writing something about H.R. Giger, who I’m also a huge fan of…”

Naga: “H.R. Giger?”

Hayley: “He’s the guy who designed the xenomorph. He was a strange artist, really great. He’s a big fan of cats. Not the musical, the little animals.”

“I also really like Noah Hawley’s work on Fargo. I remember avoiding it at first, because I don’t like the idea of taking one thing and turning it into another thing. It doesn’t always work. But he’s good at it, so when I came to this I wasn’t eye-rolling about another prequel TV show, because that is generally how I come to a prequel. I was actually quite buzzed about this. And it doesn’t disappoint at all.”

“The opening scenes are shot just like the original Alien. The angles when they’re around the table, and they’re eating, it’s all the same design, there’s even a ginger cat like Jones. And this will sound weird, but what I really like about the casting, especially on that ship, was that everyone had a kind of 1970s face: there were no Instagram faces. It’s a really rare thing."

"Then when we get into the actual story, which is down on Earth, it’s telling this complicated thing about synthetic humans and real ones and it’s raising all sorts of questions about what makes us human.

"That’s the kind of stuff I love in sci-fi, all of the murky questions it kicks up. And they can get quite dark, especially when they’re dealing with robots and death. Here it’s this tech genius who’s transferring this consciousness of terminally ill children into adult synthetic bodies, so that when they become soldiers, later on, they’ve got these superhuman powers, but the brains of children.”

“I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m liking it so much more than Alien Romulus. Did you watch Romulus?”

Scott: “Yeah.”

Hayley: “That movie, it came out last year and it was just a lot of people killing aliens in increasingly stupid ways and it was so saturated with aliens that they were no longer this creepy threat, they were just everywhere. This is a more complicated story about humanity, but there’s also lots of violence and killing aliens…”

Scott: “Loads!”

Hayley: “... so it’s not boring and pretentious. But I think the best thing about it is that it’s giving us something new and adding to the Alien story, rather than vomiting up stuff we already like.”

Naga: “I’m so glad we don’t speak about the reviews before…

Hayley: “Did you hate it?”

Naga: “Hated it!”

“Absolute tosh!”

“Every line I could predict what was being said, full of cliches, yes clever the way the dinner scenes or the wake up scenes, reminiscent of the film.”

“I’ve seen the film, the film was amazing, both the films, the first two films were amazing, I don’t need to see it again. I do like the idea of questioning humanity, but it was done on a really base level I found and when I’ve ranted about something before, you’ve gone ‘are you ok? Are you in a bad mood?’”

“No!”

“I was very open to this, because I like sci-fi, I have a darth vader suitcase, as you’ve seen, I do like sci-fi, and I love the exploration of science. No, I thought it was a load of tosh, I was sighing my way through it.”

The first two episodes of Alien: Earth are available to watch on Disney+ now, with a new episode available every Wednesday at 5pm.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on 蜜芽传媒 Sounds.