Ohhh man did I ever love this miniseries that first aired in 1983. It’s your typical ‘Aliens come to earth under that guise of friendship but really have quite insidious plans to steal our water and eat humans for dinner’ plot, but, cheesy 80s special effects aside (which actually weren’t that bad considering it was for television), it was pretty well done. Now the show is considered a cult classic which I think is just peachy. 
The show followed a ragtag bunch of rebels as they came together, united and eventually defeated the Visitors. The parallels between their struggle and the WWII Jewish struggle against the Nazi’s was pretty blatant but not over the top (in fact, according to the IMDb, the series was intended as a literal telling of the Nazi takeover of German and the resistance movement against it. However, due to the popularity of Star Wars, network execs had the producers change it to a science fiction mini-series.) You had your heroes and your traitors, your allies and your enemies all fighting toward ultimate survival.
I think, possibly, though my memory isn’t the best, that “V” might have been my first real experience with Sci-fi that stuck with me. Yes I’d seen “E.T.” and “Star Wars” but while I love and appreciate those shows now, I don’t think they made the impression on me that “V” did.
I was riveted the moment Mike, the hotshot cameraman, stopped in the middle of a fierce gunfight to look up in shock at a gigantic spaceship hovering above the earth. Then, through a montage of news reports, we discover that Mike’s ship is only one of a fleet moving over every major city on earth.
The main heroes of the piece are Mike and Julie. Julie is a brilliant biochemistry student and Mike is the afore-mentioned hotshot cameraman for the major networks. Julie finds herself the improbable leader of a group of rebels after her colleagues begin to mysteriously disappear after the Visitors arrive. Mike is a bit of a rogue who works alone but eventually he ends up helping Julie and her group by planning strategic assaults against the Visitors. With the help of a band of sympathizers among the aliens, they of course, eventually defeat them.
There’s way more to it than that, but in a nutshell
The miniseries led to a short-lived regular series which is also worth checking out, but I like the miniseries the best. Both are available on DVD fairly cheap so if you like a good sci-fi story, I highly recommend checking “V” out.
Bit O’ Trivia: The music that plays when the ship is first seen has as a major motif consisting of three short notes followed by one long note. This is the letter V in Morse code. It is also patterned after Ludwig van Beethoven’s fifth symphony
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