E4 orders new comedy drama Aliens
E4 has ordered Aliens, a comedy drama about a group of extra-terrestrials forced to live in a segregated community on Earth.
The channel explains: "The aliens are here. In fact, they've been here for the last 40 years. But though they walk like us, talk like us and look like us, they're not allowed to live with us.
"All aliens are forced to live behind a huge wall in a in a segregated community called Troy; a ramshackle and hedonistic ghetto where a criminal sub-culture thrives. It's a world of mystery, danger and forbidden pleasures.
"But when mild-mannered human Lewis, a border control guard at the wall's check-point, discovers that he is half-alien, his secret threatens to turn his world upside down as he is drawn into the dark underbelly of Troy."
The six-part series has been created by In The Flesh writer Fintan Ryan and is being produced by Clerkenwell Films, the production company behind the channel's pervious sci-fi comedy drama hit Misfits.
Ryan has prior comedy experience, having previously created Never Better, the dark 2008 BBC Two sitcom which starred Stephen Mangan as a recovering alcoholic.
Roberto Troni from Channel 4 says: "Scabrously funny, shockingly violent and at times positively hallucinogenic, Aliens is a wry and riotous adventure into a world that is at once entirely familiar and absolutely strange. It's a culture clash, a gangster epic, but fundamentally it is an all too human search for acceptance and identity."
Petra Fried, the Executive Producer for Clerkenwell Films comments: "In Aliens, Fintan Ryan has created a world that mixes social commentary, crime genre and comedy in a new and exciting way."
Fintan Ryan himself adds: "Clerkenwell is the only company capable of making this show, E4 is the only place they'd let us make it. This is going to be good."
Casting details for Aliens has yet to be finalised. The episodes will be filmed later this year, for broadcast on E4 in 2016.