People of Earth: Season 1 (2016)

I started out really liking People of Earth, giving it 4 stars out of 5, but the storyline lost some of its quirky steam during the last half of the season, so I dialed back slightly to 3.5 stars. The characters are not stellar, but they each have a chance to express their personalities and display their chemistry as an ensemble. They sometimes work at cross purposes to each other, but they also share a bedrock understanding that they are in each others' lives, no matter what, to help, or failing that, to push back until they can help. With Oscar Nunez from The Office playing a plainclothes priest and empathetic bystander who misses his jazz band from his party days, one might be tempted to refer to People of Earth as a faux-reality-style documentary like The Office, exploring the lives of a support group for those who believe they have been abducted by aliens, except for the three aliens that have been doing the abducting, as well as masquerading as humans. What is most interesting here are the real human castaways, interacting with each other, as well as with the aliens that are trying to feign humanity, which makes for the funniest stuff. All told, the humor is low-key -- Iceland, "now don't get weird" -- but the background story makes them gleam. Enjoy! 3.5 stars. (12-23-2016)