It’s safe to say that most of our illustrious readers won’t remember the early 80s..but on Sunday afternoons, on ITV, an American series called Project UFO was aired.

It was the X-Files of its day. It was inspired by a real, 18-year study conducted by the US Air Force, called Project Blue Book, where thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed and investigated where possible. Sadly, the show only lasted two seasons, largely because it was ahead of its time.

It’s one of those concepts that’s been overlooked for a reboot, probably because of the saturation of the X-Files, which is a shame. But the History Channel is giving it a go under the watchful eye of Robert Zemeckis.

In the new show, called Project Blue Book, Aiden Gillen plays a skeptical investigator of all things otherworldly, but as this first trailer shows, it turns out that deep down, he wants to believe.

Loosely based on declassified documents from the US government, the ‘50s-set drama stars Gillen as J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer recruited by the US Air Force to investigate sightings of extraterrestrial life all over America. Hynek and his assigned partner Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey) start out skeptical and seek to confirm that little green men from space aren’t real. However, the duo quickly find that their employers are hiding something big from both them and the American people at large.

That said, showrunner Sean Jablonski has that despite the presence of a literal alien in a tank, Project Blue Book will lean more towards its conspiracy thriller side rather than the ‘50s retro sci-fi of UFOs and aliens hidden among us.

This is not a little green men show. This is more of a government conspiracy show with a great sci-fi twist — and also a character piece. Everything we see is and is not what it is. We’re not gonna take the position, certainly not early on, that little green men are running around and it’s just a question of finding them. The creature that you see in that tank is to them what they think it is, and yet it’s not.

Joining Gillen and Malarkey are Laura Mennell, Ksenia Solo, Michael Harney and Neal McDonough.

A period, X-Files-esque, sci-fi-inspired drama set in the 50s with high production values could work really well. Currently, 11 episodes have been slated.

The series is set to launch on the History Channel this winter.

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