There used to be this rubbish BBC sitcom called 2.4 Children which imbeciles watched (we regularly tuned in). It ended in 1999.

We got to thinking… how could we spice up such a banal sitcom formula of your average family doing average stuff such as bickering aimlessly, venting fury at each other, and inviting other family members around at Christmas?

The answer seemed obvious to us – draft in the disastrous Alien 3 film plot, insert a bit of humour, and ramp it all up with extreme depictions of horror, blood, death, destruction, and Sigourney Weaver being awesome.

What’s not to love? This television show most definitely would have won many Oscars.

Alien 3.4 Children

It’s a simple premise. Set in Rochdale, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is living in your average terraced house in a suburb of some run down dive.

She’s a mother of three beautiful young slobbering alien monstrosities, who frequently attack the local population at will and have an active hive of face hugger eggs and cocooned locals stored in the basement.

Her husband is the failed doctor Charles Dance, who’s moronically bumped off early in the series (as in the film) to ruin everything for no reason.

As with the episode Gas on TV series Bottom, Ripley’s neighbour is Mr. Rottweiler (Brian Glover, who plays the prison warden in Alien 3) who hates foreigners, including aliens, and is a drunken wastrel.

Other locals include Paul McGann (who’s in Alien 3, strangely enough) and Richard E. Grant (who was supposed to be, but was dropped in favour of Dance).

This is the local gay couple who, with camp efficiency, go about their camp lifestyle and believe Ripley’s horrifying children are badly dressed drag queens. Kind of like how they do in Withnail and I.

Convoluted plot? Balls to that! Episodes would largely consist of passionate mother Ripley attempting to fool perplexed local authorities into believing nothing suspicious is happening at her property.

This situation is difficult, in part due to the relentless high pitched screams of terror emanating from the home and the occasional half eaten corpse mysteriously appearing in the front garden.

This Sounds Too Outlandish…

Nonsense! It would work a treat. Over the course of 12 planned series, Ripley and her babies would wreak havoc in the local vicinity, with each episode building towards Ripley’s secret being exposed, only for something to save the day at the end.

This would set up a pleasant formula for dim-witted viewers.

The alien family could continue on its loving way, whilst the decimated local population would quake in terror at the unknown threat around them (which is what living near a McDonald’s must be like, when you think about it).

Oscar winning episodes would have included:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger’s guest appearance as the Terminator. Drafted in to terminate the aliens, he instead ends up staying for dinner, is brainwashed, and later detonates a nuclear bomb on the local authority’s Town Hall.
• Ripley takes the kids to the beach for a holiday, but triggers an international incident when the aliens swim the channel, invade Germany, and spread their young about liberally.
• Morgan Freeman’s guest appearance as Red from Shawshank Redemption. Instead of getting busy living, he gets busy dying at the slobbering claws of alien horror stories.
• Ripley’s dating exploits (following husband Dance’s decapitation) land her a hot date with Matthew McConaughey, who visits her home and stumbles drunkenly into the basement to take a slash. He’s promptly cocooned by outraged aliens, but survives the chest bursting nightmare which follows. Smitten with his little alien dude son, he names it McConaughey Jnr. and the two form a lasting relationship, and are soon often photographed in the tabloid press working out, smoking joints, and leering at women.
• That one when the aliens run amok in Tesco and steal several kilos of cured ham, a tin of sweetcorn, and a ham sandwich.

Cripes, it would have been fabulous! It’s too bad Hollywood execs are ignoring our creative endeavours here. “Stop sending us letters or we’ll get a restraining order on you!”, they put it. Bastards.