By FIONA RAE
It's nice to know, in an era that spawned the X-Files and numerous other paranoid shows, that someone isn't taking the alien threat too seriously.
3rd Rock From the Sun may have been an obvious joke when it started in 1996 (the what-would-aliens-think-if-they-landed-on-Earth gag), but it's had legs.
Three Emmy wins later for star John Lithgow (and one for co-star Kristen Johnston), the show about aliens Tom, Dick and Harry - and Sally - still bounces along, driven by a couple of tightly interwoven storylines each week and some excellent hamming.
Like Married With Children, 3rd Rock has an old-fashioned knowing air of playing to the audience, especially when it comes to guest stars - like last week's appearance by William Shatner.
As regular viewers will know, Shatner plays the aliens' supreme commander, the Big Giant Head, a role for which his famous staccato delivery is well suited.
In an echo of his Star Trek days when Kirk always got the girl, the BGH sired Vicki Dubcek's baby (the writers just had to get around to the an-alien-fathered-my-baby story), and last week returned to Earth to claim his son.
He got some pretty good lines: "Strange, I don't remember Earth being this bitchy" and "Vicki, there's only one thing in the world I love more than you - that's me."
Shatner was Emmy-nominated for his guest star part - a step up from his "Razzie" awards for worst actor and director for various Star Trek offshoots.
3rd Rock uses a small but perfectly formed formula where two storylines - last week it was Sally's shoe obsession and the BGH's return - eventually converge. It happened when Harry, having been inadvertently hypnotised, repeatedly fell down and got back up again at a restaurant.
Sight gags like that are fun for all the family, and 3rd Rock is at its best when the aliens' attempts at deciphering human behaviour lead to bizarre situations (Tommy was trying to use hypnosis on Sally to cure her of her shoe addiction, and it worked on Harry instead).
But the show would be nothing without the biggest ham of all, John Lithgow, whose Dick Solomon, the aliens' high commander, is an anxious egomaniac. Lithgow is justifiably the winner of those Emmys and his physicality and timing push the show past ordinary.
Refreshingly, Lithgow and the rest of the cast don't mind looking stupid - sure makes a change from all the well-dressed, well-groomed, looking-for-love twentysomethings that the US television production line is so good at spitting out.
Not every show is a winner, especially when the slapstick or the yelling have no real reason to be there. But you can bet that when Mulder eventually gets abducted by aliens he won't be talking, like Vicki, about being king of the "freakin' universe!"
3rd Rock From the Sun
TV3, 8 pm
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