ALF (TV series)

Did You Know?

• In West Germany, the actor who dubbed ALF's voice, Tommi Piper, recorded two albums and four singles as ALF between 1988 and 1991.
• In 1989, ALF himself won Favorite TV Actor at the Kids' Choice Awards.
• Reruns of ALF entered off-network syndication in September 1990 and aired on MeTV from May 2017 until May 2020.

Plot

Gordon Shumway, an alien native to the planet Melmac, picked up an amateur radio signal and followed it to Earth, where his spacecraft crashed into the garage of the Tanner family. The Tanners are a middle-class suburban household living in California’s San Fernando Valley. The family includes Willie, a social worker; his wife Kate; their teenage daughter Lynn; their younger son Brian; and a pet cat named Lucky, whom the alien has a persistent desire to eat. Willie decides to call him ALF, short for “Alien Life Form.” Uncertain of what else to do, the Tanners agree to hide ALF in their home. They must keep him secret from the Alien Task Force, a U.S. military unit focused on extraterrestrials, and from their overly curious neighbors, Trevor and Raquel Ochmonek, while ALF works on fixing his ship. Although his struggles with culture shock, survivor’s guilt, and loneliness frequently create trouble for the family—and they constantly worry about the consequences if his existence is discovered—the Tanners eventually come to care for him and accept him as one of their own.

It later comes out that ALF’s home world, Melmac, was destroyed by a nuclear war, leaving him and any other survivors homeless. He escaped that fate only because he was away serving in the Melmac Orbit Guard. In the first-season episode “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” ALF attempts to persuade the U.S. President to halt the nuclear program, fearing Earth could end up like Melmac. However, a mix-up leads the President and national security officials to call the FBI, who come to arrest Willie.

Across the series, ALF learns about life on Earth and builds relationships both inside and outside the Tanner household. These new friends include Willie’s brother Neal; Kate’s widowed mother Dorothy, with whom ALF shares a love-hate dynamic; Dorothy’s boyfriend and eventual husband Whizzer; the Ochmoneks’ nephew Jake; a psychologist named Larry; and a blind woman named Jody. Jody never discovers that ALF is an alien, though she can tell by touch that he is short and hairy.

Production

Producer Bernie Brillstein wasn't initially keen on seeing Paul Fusco audition with a puppet. He had long managed Jim Henson and considered Henson the greatest puppeteer in the business. But Fusco's short performance as ALF changed his mind; Brillstein found the character hilarious and believed it could anchor its own show. Fusco went on to co-produce the series with Tom Patchett, who also co-created, wrote, and directed. Warner Bros. Television and Lorimar-Telepictures first syndicated the show. Later, U.S. syndication rights moved to Debmar-Mercury after its parent company Lionsgate acquired home video rights. Shout! Factory took over distribution in February 2022.

Making a show with hand-operated puppets, similar to Jim Henson's Muppet Show, created major technical hurdles. It placed enormous strain on Fusco and the four lead actors. In a 2000 People magazine interview, everyone confirmed the set was constantly tense. Max Wright said he hated working with a technically demanding puppet that got most of the best lines. He admitted he was "hugely eager to have ALF over with." Comedian Artie Lange, who later worked with Wright on The Norm Show, recalled an incident where Wright became "crazed" and physically attacked the ALF puppet, forcing producers to pull him off. Anne Schedeen described the final taping night: "There was one take and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared... There were no goodbyes." She added that "there was no joy on the set... it was a technical nightmare – extremely slow, hot and tedious... A 30-minute show took 20, 25 hours to shoot." Though she liked her on-screen children, she said some adults had "difficult personalities. The whole thing was a big dysfunctional family." She found it "astonishing that ALF really was wonderful and that word never got out what a mess our set really was." Andrea Elson, who battled bulimia during the second season, said, "If ALF had gone one more year, everybody would have lost it." Wright later softened, conceding years afterward that "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like, ALF brought people a lot of joy." Fusco summed it up in 2012: "It was just the nature of the beast."

Home media

Between 2004 and 2006, Lionsgate Home Entertainment put out all four seasons of ALF on Region 1 DVD, working under a license from Paul Fusco and Brillstein/Grey Communications. These releases used syndicated cuts of the episodes, which run 21 minutes instead of the original 24. The episodes were ordered by production sequence, not by how they originally aired. The hour-long episodes "Try to Remember" (from season one) and "ALF's Special Christmas" (from season two) did appear in their full-length versions, though "Try to Remember" was the censored edit, and "ALF's Special Christmas" had a brief scene cut that included the song "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." The other hour-long episode, "Tonight, Tonight," was broken into two parts for syndication. The season four episode "Make 'Em Laugh" was shown almost completely, with just one line of dialogue removed. The series finale, "Consider Me Gone," had its "To Be Continued..." disclaimer taken out because NBC canceled the show after its first airing. Many episodes also lost most of their copyrighted music, which shortened some by as much as six minutes. Lionsgate said they had to use the syndicated versions because remastering the original NBC broadcast versions would be too expensive, a decision that drew heavy criticism. Before that, Video Service Corporation had put out two other ALF DVDs. The ALF Files came out only in Canada on November 1, 2002, and included the hour-long episodes "Try to Remember," "ALF's Special Christmas," and "Tonight, Tonight" in their full-length formats, though "Try to Remember" still used the re-edited version that changed ALF's electric shock in the bathtub. Project: ALF was released on September 13, 2005. Both of these DVDs had optional commentary from creator Paul Fusco, with co-creator Tom Patchett joining him on the first one. On February 24, 2022, Shout! Factory announced it had acquired the distribution rights to the series. Shout then launched an "ALFtv" YouTube channel, posting several full episodes in their syndicated forms along with clips. On June 24, Shout released the original uncut versions of fan-favorite episodes, featuring new commentary from Patchett and Fusco, with Fusco performing in character as ALF.