Premiered on NBC on 22 September 1986, "ALF (Alien Life Form)" the furry alien named Gordon Shumway who crash-landed his spaceship into a suburban garage, then moved in with the Tanner family for the next 4 years. At the time, critics weren't sure what NBC was doing with its upcoming sitcom. Some medias described the new series as "ridiculous" and predicted it would fail, also targeted the lead character "ALF" as not cute enough to sustain the comedy.
ALF was a cretainly an unusual choice: a live-action sitcom about an ordinary family suddenly visited by an alien. He wasn't kindly or even cute, indeed, he was a crabby, cranky, and furry monster who was sarcastic, selfish, always scheming, and stuck in a suburban house with people who could not get rid of himbut in 1986, there was little else on television quite like it.
Making its eventual success even more remarkable was the difficult production. To accommodate the puppet, the set had to be raised four feet above the ground with trap doors cut into the stage. ALF was voiced and operated by puppeteer Paul Fusco, while 33-inch-tall actor Michu Meszaros wore a costume for full-body shots. The elaborate setup made "ALF" unusually time-consuming and expensive to produce, meaning the strange new sitcom needed viewers to embrace it quickly. Max Wright, who played family Father, Willie, was able to appreciate the series more fully years after it ended. "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like," he said. "'ALF' brought people a lot of joy. They adored it."
But not everything seemed to work perfectly at the time, it was an exhausting show to produce, a 30-minute episode regularly took 20 to 25 hours to shoot. The cast spent entire days waiting while the puppet was repositioned, and the atmosphere on set reflected it. In a 2000 People magazine interview, the cast confirmed the set ran on constant, high tension. Max Wright, who played Willie Tanner, said of the show's end: "I was hugely eager to have it over with." For the shots that needed ALF’s full body on screen, walking or standing, the production used Michu Meszaros, a 33-inch-tall former Ringling Bros. circus performer from Hungary, uncredited in the role. Meszaros died in 2016 at 76. "It was a technical nightmare," Anne Schedeen, who played Kate and passed away in June 2026, told People in a 2000 interview. "Extremely slow, hot, and tedious. If you had a scene with ALF, it took centuries."
The production was a grind unlike anything else on network television in the 1980s. ALF was an elaborate puppet operated primarily by creator Paul Fusco from beneath the set. Fusco controlled the mouth and right arm, Lisa Buckley operated the left arm, and Bob Fappiano ran the facial movements by radio control. The set itself was built on a platform raised four feet off the ground, with trap doors cut at many points so ALF could pop up almost anywhere.
Curiously, "ALF" became a hit, with NBC adding two extra episodes to Season 1 and quickly renewing it for a second season. Although the character was popular with kids, puppeteer Paul Fusco told The Tampa Tribune that the show's appeal extended to all ages. "Sure, children like the character, but there are jokes that go right over their heads," he said. Fusco added of ALF, "He says things we're all thinking but never have the nerve to say. He can get away with it because he's an alien."
Co-created by Fusco and Tom Patchett, debuted to strong numbers and climbed from there. By its second season it was the 10th most-watched show on US television. It won the 1987 People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy Program and Favorite Show at the 1988 Kids' Choice Awards. The franchise machine followed immediately: a Saturday morning cartoon, ALF: The Animated Series, then a second animated spin-off, ALF Tales, and ALF's face on seemingly everything a store could stock. For about three years he was everywhere.
The fourth season's final episode, "Consider Me Gone," originally aired on March 24, 1990. In it, the Alien Task Force, the military unit that spent four seasons hunting him, finally closes in. The series ends with ALF captured and the story unresolved. Fade to black. It was supposed to be continuation, not an ending, NBC had given the continuation for a fifth season, but then, the network withdrew its support, and the show was canceled with ALF in the hands of the government and no explanation coming. Six years later, ABC produced a TV movie called Project: ALF that seemed to be the continuation we expected but none of the original Tanner family cast appeared in it.
The franchise kept trying. In 2004, TV Land gave the character his own talk show, ALF’s Hit Talk Show, with Ed McMahon as his sidekick, which is exactly what it sounds like. In August 2018, Warner Bros. announced a reboot but it was canceled three months later. The original four seasons have quietly migrated across every streaming platform that will have them just like any other sitcom has done so far, and believe it or not, the show still as popular as it was 40 years ago, thanks to streaming on different platforms such as Prime Video and Peacock, and free on Tubi, Plex, and The Roku Channel.
In summary, ALF was a weirdo, expensive, exhausting production that ran on the talent of one puppeteer and the patience of a cast that did not always have much patience left. It turn a furry creature into a stardom pop culture icon, despite the convivence on the set was awful, someway somehow the rating were high and real, but 40 years later we still watch the re-runs and keep talking about it.
Especial mention to the original cast we lost, John LaMotta & Liz Sheridan who played the nosy neighbours the Ochmonek both already died, Max Wright, who played Willie Tanner for all four seasons, died on June 26, 2019, at 75, of lymphoma. Anne Schedeen who played Kate Tanner for all four seasons, died on June 14, 2026 at 77. Benji Gregory, who played the youngest Tanner, Brian, died on June 13, 2024, at 46, in Peoria, Arizona. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled the death accidental, caused by hepatic cirrhosis and heat exposure. He was found with his service dog. And finally Michu Meszaros, the man inside the suit, died on June 12, 2016, at 76.
