ALF (TV series)
Encyclopedia : A : AL : ALF : ALF (TV series)
This article discusses the sitcom. There is also and Alf's Hit Talk Show. ALF is the name of a popular television sitcom series produced by NBC between 1986 and 1990, inspired by and spoofing the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It first aired September 22, 1986.
Premise
The title character is Gordon Shumway, an alien nicknamed A.L.F. (Alien Life Form). He was born on October 28, 1756 on the Lower East side of the planet Melmac. The planet Melmac was located six parsecs past the Hydra Centaurus Supercluster and had a green sky and blue grass.Shumway's body is covered with orange fur. He has a rippled snout, facial moles, and eight stomachs, and he likes to eat cats. He attended high school for 122 years and was captain of a Bouillabaisseball team (which is played on ice using shellfish as a ball).
In the pilot episode, Shumway follows an amateur radio signal and crash-lands into the garage of the Tanners. The Tanners are a suburban middle class family consisting of the social worker Willie (Max Wright), his wife Kate (Anne Schedeen), their children Lynn (Andrea Elson) and Brian (Benji Gregory Hertzberg), and the cat Lucky.
Unsure what to do, the Tanners take Shumway into their home and hide him from the Alien Task Force, the military, and their nosy neighbors (the Ochmoneks), until he can repair his spacecraft. He generally hid in the kitchen. It was eventually revealed that Melmac exploded when all its inhabitants simultaneously turned on their hair dryers, and that Shumway was not only homeless, but also, to the best of his knowledge, the last survivor of both his civilization and his species. He became a permanent member of the family, although his culture shock, survivor's guilt, general boredom, despair, and loneliness frequently caused difficulty for the Tanners. In one episode Alf blows up the Tanner's house; in another Alf goes on a camping trip with the Tanners and nearly becomes a hunting trophy after being mistaken for an aardvark by two hunters; in a third episode Alf goes on a lost gold mine expedition with the Tanners and nearly drives Willie Tanner to the breaking point.
The original series spans over four seasons and 102 episodes (each episode's name is also the name of a song relevant to the episode's plot), in which Alf learns about Earth culture and makes new friends both within the Tanner family and without, including Willie's brother Neal, Kate's mother Dorothy (with whom Alf has a love-hate relationship-he refers to her as the Wicked Witch of the West), the Ochmoneks' nephew Jake, and a blind woman named Jody (who never quite figures out that Alf isn't human, though she is aware through touch that he is short and very hairy). Changes pass within the Tanner household over the course of the series, including the birth of a new child, Eric, Alf's move from his initial quarters in the laundry room to a converted attic "apartment", and the death of Lucky the cat; in the final instance, Alf finds that, despite his occasional attempts to catch Lucky with the intention of making the cat a meal, he has come to love and respect the family pet too much to do anything untoward with Lucky's remains. In the series finale, Alf is about to be rescued by other survivors of his home planet, but is instead captured by the American military, and the viewer is left to ponder Alf's ultimate fate.
After the series run in the United States, it went on to even greater success in reruns in many European countries, including Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and Slovakia. The series was so popular in Germany in fact that the made-for-TV Film "Project ALF" was released there theatrically under the name "Alf Der Film" ("Alf the Movie") and was panned by critics and fans particularly for the Tanners' absence.
The first ALF DVD (The ALF Files) was released, exclusively in Canada, in 2002. In the summer of 2004 the first season of the show was released on DVD in the United States, but loyal fans were very disappointed that the DVD release featured the syndicated version of the episodes which have several minutes cut from each of them. This prompted an increase in the sale of bootleg tapes of the entire show from various websites. Currently, syndicated version DVDs of seasons 1, 2, and 3 are now available in the United States. Season 4 is slated to be released on DVD on September 5th, 2006.
Cast
- Max Wright - Willie Tanner
- Anne Schedeen - Kate Tanner
- Andrea Elson - Lynn Tanner
- Benji Gregory - Brian Tanner
- John LaMotta - Trevor Ochmonek
- Liz Sheridan - Raquel Ochmonek
- Josh Blake - Jake Ochmonek (seasons 2-3)
- JM J. Bullock - Neal Tanner (season 4)
- Lucky the Cat - himself
Guest Starring Cast
- Andrea Covell - Jody
- Bill Daily - Larry
- Anne Meara - Dorothy Halligan Deverg
- Paul Dooley - Whizzar Deverg
Spinoffs
Animated Series
To capitalize on the success of the series, a spinoff animated series arose and aired on Saturday mornings on NBC. , (AKA Alf on Melmac) set on ALF's home planet of Melmac, ran from 1987 to 1988. The series was a prequel series, set on Melmac before the planet exploded. The show focused on ALF, his family, his friends, and girlfriend Rhonda and their various exploits. Each episode was bookended by a live-action sequence involving ALF talking to the television viewers, setting up the episode.When the cartoon entered its second season, it was paired with in a one-hour block with its own spin-off AlfTales, which took Gordon and the cast of characters from season one and recast them as characters from assorted classic (Earthly) fairy tales.
Select episodes of the first season of the cartoon are included as a special feature on the ALF: Season 2 DVD.
Marvel Comics
An ALF comic book was published by Marvel Comics beginning in 1987 and ran for four years, 50 issues, and nearly a dozen specials.
The comic loosely followed the continuity of the television show (though it featured alternate takes on certain episodes, like the birth of Eric Tanner) and featured numerous parodies of Marvel Comic characters and other pop culture parodies in the form of "Melmac Flashbacks". Towards the end of the series, when the cancellation of the series was imminent, the series took a highly critical position towards Marvel Comics and then Marvel Editor-In-Chief Tom DeFalco.
TV Movie
In 1996 a 90-minute television movie, named , was aired on ABC. This movie picked up six years after the events of the TV series with ALF in government custody and focuses on a scientist and military policy officer who break ALF out of government custody to get him to a millionaire who is building a working spaceship, so ALF can leave Earth.Other
- At the time that the original TV series was popular, some ALF-related merchandise was sold, including a 1988 calendar with Melmac's planetary holidays (such as Shout at a Shrub Day) prominently marked.
- In 1987, Dutch remixer and producer Ben Liebrand made a mix with samples from one of the ALF-shows, and had a BIG HIT with it. The song was called 'Stuck on earth'. The mix had a lot of impact at the TV Studio:'Next step was getting permission to release the mix. For this, all vocal lines, and the spoken texts were traced back to the episodes they came from, and the authors who had written them. New record contracts needed to be created for each and everyone of the authors.' [[Citing sources citation needed]]
- There is an obscure Sega Master System video game based on ALF. It, however, lacks decent gameplay and is commonly forgotten.
- Alf also made a appearance in the drug prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.
- Recently, ALF has been appearing in one of the numerous long-distance dialing plan commercials on American television. ALF has made many appearances on Hollywood Squares.
- In July 2004, ALF hosted a half-hour talk show, Alf's Hit Talk Show, co-hosted by Ed McMahon, on the TV Land network.
- Alf also appeared as a guest on Love Boat: The Next Wave as well as several Simpsons episodes.
- In the 1996 Made-for-TV movie, ALF states an intense dislike for the Fox Television Network
- Like many shows of its day, ALF also had a trading card series. Most featured stills from various episodes, but a few cards depicted Bouillabaisseball players complete with bogus stats like "Splats."
- ALF appeared (in parody) in an episode of Family Guy as a recovering drug addict in a flashback special on VH-1.
- ALF appeared briefly on Chappelle's Show as a ghost figure, but the puppet design was rushed.
See also
External links
- [ALF Episode Guide] -- by Dean Adams
- Open Directory Project: [ALF]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.