Given that Blink-182 sang Aliens Exist back in 1999, which was co-written by Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker, we really shouldn’t be that surprised that Tom is now sticking his neck out.

DeLonge was dismissed from the band in 2015, and it seems one of his more recent pursuits is producing a docuseries titled Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

The former Blink-182 singer–guitarist doesn’t seem to be heavily involved in the on-screen action, but he does crop up now and again. Here’s the Guardian:

His role, as best I can tell, is a sort of silent on-screen financier, who has put together a crack team of former Pentagon operatives who all got fired from the government for believing in aliens too much, and occasionally they convene at DeLonge’s California mansion and read things off notepads.

DeLonge [above] occasionally sits in on a car-ride or nods wide-eyed during an interrogation (always wearing a hat with a piece of tape obscuring the logo), but that is about the depth of his involvement. Secondly, you’d imagine the tone of an over-financed UFO documentary would be somewhere between “farcical” and “strange man in pub garden who has read too many forums”, but I am annoyed to report that it is actually “alarmingly convincing”.

“Alarmingly convincing” is pretty much as good as it gets when your subject matter is UFO investigations.

The man you’re about to see, who has a questionable goatee and seems worked up about everything, is Luis Elizondo, a former Pentagon worker who once headed up the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Unidentified doesn’t really have a full trailer, so clips like this will have to suffice:

Back to the Guardian with why this is actually rather watchable:

…it’s all weirdly compelling, tickling the same synapses as Netflix murder documentaries, where a vast tract of half-found evidence is presented to you with severe earnestness, and you kind of fill in the gaps yourself.

…you do imagine a roomful of government staff are watching this in a triple-locked panic room in the heart of Area 51, laughing their well-informed heads off. But for the rest of us: does it really hurt to question our reality? Might we not as well do it with Tom DeLonge formerly of Blink-182, wearing a too-branded cap?

I don’t see why not.

Fans of UFO investigations should also watch Project Blue Book, which has received some rave reviews since it began airing.

[source:guardian]