Spawned from the slightly less disappointing Graham Baker film of the same name, Alien Nation succeeds in taking everything that didnt work about the movie and straining it through the dodgy production values of late 80s TV.
It picks up the story of aliens trying to integrate into Los Angeles society after crash-landing on Earth an unspeakably cack-handed allegory for racism in America. But much more than clumsy metaphor, the real problem is that theres actually very little science-fiction here. The whole set-up is basically wasted on a show thats little more than a buddy-cop procedural with added prosthetics. Mercifully axed after this first season, it ends on a cliffhanger eventually resolved in a TV movie not included here.