Radio sitcom from The BBC about an alien invasion in the Home Counties. Geonin commander Uljabaan sets up a small-scale invasion to observe human beings ahead of a full invasion, placing the Buckinghamshire village of Cresdon Green under a force field with a Perception Filter to make the rest of the world forget its existence. So how do the residents of Cresdon Green respond? They keep calm and carry on, naturally. Nobody seems that bothered by the fact that they're cut off from the outside world, or by the prospect of Earth being taken over by aliens. Except for a small resistance movement...
Tropes:
- Aliens Speaking English: Uljabaan and The Computer speak English, but the minions only speak their own alienese.
- As You Know: Between Katrina and Richard, the background of the invasion is neatly summed up in the first scene of the pilot.
- A Tankard of Moose Urine: Ron the barkeep's "Cabernet Sauvig-ron" winenote in "Counterplot" is described by Richard as having a lethal effect on plant life, and Ron rebuts another character's assertion that the wine will cause internal bleeding by stating that it only exacerbates existing internal bleeding. The "wine" ends up being a false Chekhov's Gun as a proffered solution to Uljabaan's plot in the episode.
- Backup Twin: When The Computer is destroyed by the Logic Bomb described below, it is simply replaced with another one exactly the same. This Computer was already stated to have been one also, as a previous iteration was destroyed after having gone insane and murder-y was destroyed by Uljabaan.
- Big Sister Mentor: Katrina seems to see herself as this to Lucy. She's not generally very good at it, though she does manage to coach Lucy through her A-Levels.
- Chew-Out Fake-Out: In "Counterplot", Katrina is alarmed when she finds out that Lucy was growing cannabis secretly in a garden allotment, and says that her father Richard, head of the Allotments Committee, would not be impressed by that. Richard immediately says he is impressed, only as England's climate and soil isn't ideal for growing a plant such as cannabis, so he was genuinely impressed that Lucy could pull it off at all.
- Computer Virus: In "Ctrl-Alt-Del", we see one from The Computer's point of view.
- Cunning Linguist: Lucy, possibly. She seems able to understand the minions' language and later passes an A-level in Spanish, suggesting Hidden Depths in this area.
- Cutting the Knot: When Katrina and Lucy come up with a plan that involves breaking into the mansion Uljabaan has commandeered as his HQ, Lucy is sent to case the joint for possible ways in. She returns, and states the simple solution: break a window. Which is what they do.
- Delicious Distraction: Uljabaan and his minions are extremely partial to Supreme Chef Margaret's cakes. In "Counter Plot", she is able to distract the entire cohort of minions with a spread of cakes. These same cakes ultimately help foil Uljabaan's plot by becoming cakes of discord. It also "works", though not in the way Katrina was hoping, in "Little Green Lights". She tries to get the invasion derailed by informing Uljabaan's superior that the "human infant" he is eating is in reality essentially meat loaf wrapped in Parma ham, pissing him off enough to call the whole thing off. It backfires because the superior actually greatly prefers it to the stringy, gamy, fatty, and in one instance poisonous, genuine native infants he has eaten, and so has Uljabaan stay in Cresdon Green for another year to do more research, and having Lucy pack him a doggy bag.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Ron, the proprietor of the Rose and Crown pub, was told by Lucy's parents that if she is served any alcohol at the establishment, or potentially even sets foot within the pub, they'd burn it down. We learn in the pilot episode that this was no idle threat, as after badgering Ron to give her a cocktail, her parents do indeed burn the pub right down to its foundations.
- Faux Affably Evil: Uljabaan, though there are occasional suggestions that he's really a Punch-Clock Villain who Became The Mask and is really Affably Evil underneath.
- Idyllic English Village: Set in a village in Buckinghamshire.
- I'm a Humanitarian: A Geonin tradition when commanding officers come to a conquered planet for the first time is to take a native infant, roast it and eat it at a massive banquet. Needless to say, Katrina and Margaret are not particularly keen on the idea. Neither is Uljabaan, and so he and Margaret concoct a fake baby for his superior to chow down on. Lucy is disgusted after having eaten one of the "baby's" fingers to find that the fingernail is celery,
only to learn that she may or may not have remembered that the "baby" was a fake. - I'm Standing Right Here: In the opening scene, Katrina refers to the Geonins as malign, manipulative thugs without morals and her father tries to calm her down. This being radio, we don't realise that Uljabaan is in fact, sat right next to them.
- Kid Sidekick: Lucy (17) to Katrina (34).
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- When Lucy uses The Computer to Skype the outside world, she finds nobody believes her story. The Computer says it would help but everyone would think it was just an actor putting on an alien computer voice.
- In another episode, Katrina and Lucy contemplate using one of the minions working on a secret construction project outside the force field to sneak a copy of the village newsletter to the outside world. They abandon the idea for various reasons, one of which is that even if they got the newsletter out there and read, the perception filter has made everyone forget about the village - so whoever picked it up and found their hidden message about the alien invasion would just think Cresdon Green was a fictional location made up for a sci-fi series.
- Logic Bomb: The Computer can handle anything you throw at it... except the Duckworth-Lewis Method, which causes it to completely burn out.
- Loud of War: In "Taking Overs", Uljabaan finally stops an argument between Katrina and Margaret that is stealing the thunder from one of his public announcements by switching over from the village's PA system to the much, much more powerful PA system on his ship note . When Richard shows up late and asks what he missed, Katrina says "Only tinnitus..."
- The Resistance: Main characters Katrina and Lucy. The working title under which the show was originally announced was, yes, The Resistance.
- Retcon: In the pilot, Katrina's dad Richard was the local vicar, but this was never mentioned again and it's suggested he has (or rather had) some kind of office job outside the village.
- Serious Business: The residents of Cresdon Green may not object to being isolated from the outside world, or to the Geonin's plans to conquer Earth and enslave and/or kill all its people, but they do object to things like the aliens jumping the queue for an allotment, or (horror of horrors!) building a wind turbine.
- Alien invasion or not, cakes are Serious Business for Margaret - to the point where a disagreement about which cakes should be sold at the village fete descends into violence. Every year. Except for one, where to short-circuit the inevitable chaos, Margaret unilaterally took over all the baking duties just to have one year of peace from the ongoing "Parkin is a Northern cake and so will not be sold here" donnybrook, that devolves into the force-feeding of the aforementioned pastry by one of the Village women to another.
- In the very first scene of the show, the village council will not allow the recent alien invasion to be discussed because it is not agenda, and must wait until "Any other business."
- Anything to do with Richard and Cricket in the episode "Taking Overs". He takes even the mere suggestion from his wife that they throw the game to be nice to Uljabaan as if she had just suggested human sacrifice, and at one point is shown to have Sir Swears-a-Lot tendencies (all covered through Sound-Effect Bleep) when even though he had an astounding at-bat, it wasn't good enough for him. He also tries to lie to Uljabaan about the regulation size of a cricket team just to mess with him.
- Margaret takes the Alexanders' pear tree as this, as she believed it was responsible for the town losing a "Best-Kept Town in England" competition due to the family not picking up the pears and letting them rotnote and so concocted a plan with Lucy to get Uljabaan to uproot the tree for them on the pretext that it was hiding something.
- Also Margaret: Implying or outright stating she's wrong will have her calling down the wrath of the heavens upon you, as Uljabaan found out the hard way.
- The Stoner: Lucy's only ambitions in life seem to be getting high on as many licit and illicit substances as possible and becoming a helicopter pilot. She regularly succeeds at the first (getting drunk on a regular basis, even though she is banned from the village pub under threat of her parents burning it down if she is served, and also smoking marijuana that she secretly grew in an allotment she was tending for an elderly blind woman), but not so much at the second.
- The Svengali: Katrina becomes one to Lucy in "Tempting Fete" as she progressively gets more micromanaging with Lucy's busking, to the point where she doesn't seem to be thinking about trying to propagandize the village against Ulijabaan so much as being able to ride on the coattails of whatever success an 18-year-old singing with an acoustic guitar to a captive audience in a small town cut off from the rest of the world and who's being paid in potato chips can garner. By the end of the episode, Kat has scheduled Lucy's performance at the village fete down to the microsecond, royally pissing her off, and causing her to create a song on the fly about Katrina called "Parasite."
- Wunza Plot: One's a teenager with no goals in life beyond getting intoxicated on a regular basis, one's a charity worker who's old enough to be the first one's mother (though she doesn't like people pointing it out). Together, they put up a comically ineffective resistance to their alien oppressors!
