Congratulations go to the production team of Star-Crossed for their valiant attempts to sandwich not only every American high-school stereotype, but also every alien-invasion cliché into a mere forty-two minutes. It was a heroic task indeed, and one which they largely succeeded in.

The series charts the romance which blossoms when an alien boy (Matt Lanter, AKA the hot one from 90210) is integrated into a human high-school and is re-united with Emery (Aimee Teegarden), the girl who hid him from government forces when his ship crash-landed ten years before.

The first episode opens with the predictable ‘aliens-have-landed-on-Earth-let’s-shoot-them’ scene, immediately indicating that originality would not feature highly in this series’ priorities. It also prompted the question of the plausibility of this age-old occurrence: surely aliens have worked out how to stop their ships from repeatedly breaking down by now? You would think they would at least have set up some sort of alien AA. We were then transported ten years into the future to the year 2024. Unfortunately, this is when the scepticism really started to kick in, as for a start, it’s doubtful that in just one decade technology will have advanced enough that the head-teacher’s morning notices will be delivered via hologram into classrooms…

Admittedly, there were a few believably touching moments in the episode, most notably those which took place in the hospital, where Emery’s best friend, Julia, is undergoing treatment for an unspecified form of cancer. However, these could not hide the fact that at its roots, Star-Crossed is little more than yet another re-imagining of the forbidden love trope, which brings nothing new to the table and whose potential to be something truly innovative is masked by its desperation to be an extra-terrestrial Twilight.

Star-Crossed is on Sky One, Fridays at 8pm

Sarah Weir

Photo: Property of sky.com