Alien: Earth Disney+

Annika BBC1, Saturday, 9.10pm

Bee-Kept RTE1, Sunday, 7.30pm

In Flight Channel 4, Tuesday, 9pm

It’s a bit hard to know what to expect from Alien: Earth, which, after a years-long approach, has finally landed. On one hand, it does bring the shiny, PVC xenomorph to new places (the clue’s in the title), and it comes from Noah Hawley, who seems to have a knack for emulating certain moods you remember; on the other hand, it’s coming out here on Disney, who usually smooth the soul out of drama, and it’s been nearly 40 years since a really good entry in this franchise. Since then Ridley Scott’s original world has been expanded, mythologised, and made the victim of several tedious farces (the Predator crossovers), so that the beastie that once terrorised Sigourney Weaver from steamy corridors has lost all its mystery. But, you know…let’s have a look, shall we?

First things first: it’s set in 2120, two years before the original Alien, and the opening scenes take place in a ship, and with a crew, that expertly match the originals. The crew are on their way back to Earth with a cargo including not just the alien we know, but several other slithery little beasts that you just know are waiting to wreak havoc on Earth. And meanwhile on Earth, the world has been divided not so much between governments or nations but between five huge corporations (ahem), one of which, Prodigy, is busy creating human “hybrids”: downloading the minds of sick children into synthetic adult bodies. The first hybrid is called Wendy (played by Sydney Chandler), who can do amazing things but misses human pleasures like eating. And when the ship from the first scene crashes into a city on Earth, Wendy spots the brother she misses among the search and rescue team – so she volunteers to lead her own hybrid team (the Lost Boys – yes, it leans a bit heavily on the Peter Pan imagery) into the same dripping chaos, where unspeakable dangers lurk.

If the basic plot seems straightforward, there are a lot of things to get to grips with, that might even repay a second watch: big themes (AI, human identity, corporate monsters), unreadable characters (Timothy Olyphant is clearly enjoying playing a synthetic halfway between Billy Idol and Roy Batty), and unnecessary but fun references to other associated films. It’s well acted too (the Lost Boys are very good at being children in adult bodies), and so far it’s managed a decent level of tension and body horror, even if one or two CGI moments are a bit obvious. Visually it falls somewhere between Alien and Blade Runner, which is brave: it could hardly hope to join that mighty company, after all, though I have to say that on the evidence of the first two solid and serious episodes it’s the best Alien work since 1986.

Nicola Walker stars in detective drama, ‘Annika’.

ANNIKA

Annika is back for another run, though it’s a slightly odd fit for a Saturday night – mind you, as a less bleak Scottish cop show with a habit of breaking the fourth wall, it’s probably an odd fit anywhere. If you haven’t seen it already, it follows DI Annika Strandhed (Nicola Walker) as she tends to the cases that land on her desk at the Marine Homicide Unit in Scotland: mysterious deaths generally (like a millionaire being found dead in his own shark tank), as you might guess from the office title and the fact that it’s on TV at all. Her banter with colleagues is sometimes professional, sometimes motherly, and, with DS McAndrews (Jamie Sive), something more profound and connected, in ways that now turn out to be deeper than we’d imagined last time around.

Most notably, of course, she speaks to us too, turning to the screen and making some witty or seemingly tangential remarks that later turn out to be relevant to the case as seen through her strange, intense mind. There are a few too many moments like these, and in fact she spends so much time relating to us or the other characters that the actual crime plots can feel secondary. Admittedly, the characters are more engaging than on most cop shows, and Walker is always good, making her detached, slightly anxious but highly capable character feel perfectly real. She gives it most of the flavour it has, but while it’s watchable it’s hardly gripping: a bit too light and distracting for many of us, I think.

BEEKEPT

More gentle, but often even more distracting, was Beekept, a documentary RTE delivered after their usual gentle Sunday teatime programme. It was well enough suited to that easy-on-the-senses tone, though as a study of beekeeping and beekeepers in Ireland, it seemed like the kind of heartwarming thing they could have squeezed three parts from. In the event they’ve gone with just one hour, occasionally narrated by Alison Spittle, but mostly voiced by the apiarists (some solo, some running cottage industries) themselves.

Again, this film touched on so many other areas that the subject (if not quite the film) could have done with more time: carpentry, animal husbandry, climate change, EU support for dying native Irish bees. They’re all part of the story, and are all interesting enough subjects themselves. But the film often felt a bit amateurish, with stretches of drab or shaky footage that had little business being in a film like this, and, this being RTE, a constant two-note soundtrack rattling along over just about every scene, whether people were talking or not. A gentle subject, with passionate interviewees, but deserving of better production.

In Flight stars Katherine Kelly.

IN FLIGHT

Going on holidays soon? Flying? Channel 4 want to make you nervous about customs (both the border and the cultural kinds) with a patchy new thriller called In Flight, in which Katherine Kelly plays Jo, a flight attendant on a high-end airline who goes from serving up tiny cans of Coke to smuggling drugs in an effort to get her son – called, em, Sonny – out of the Bulgarian prison he claims he’s been sent to for, you know, a crime he didn’t commit.

Airborne thrillers, with their sense of danger in a confined place (wait, are we back to Alien again?), can be quite effective if they’re not too familiar. Although this one seems to be mostly set on the ground anyway, where we learn, in the bluntest ways, what else is involved in the whole plot, and with which other characters Jo has a conveniently useful relationship. It’s never very convincing, with a complicated plot filled with too many unlikely setbacks, and it’s too self-serious to be quite what you’d call fun either. To the extent that you would be bothered to watch it, it’s all down to Kelly, whose fantastically expressive face brings real emotion and tension to a handful of scenes; but even she struggles to convince in some of the more Die Hard moments.