THE X-FILES
CHANNEL 5, MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY, 9PM
Too often forgotten in the recent history of TV’S golden age, The X-files, which first aired in 1993, was just as ground-breaking and influential in its own way as the likes of The Sopranos and The Wire. It starred then-unknowns David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Mulder and Scully, whose job it was to investigate unexplained and supposedly supernatural cases. The great twist was that Mulder was desperate to believe all the stuff about UFOS, aliens and monsters, while Scully was a die-hard sceptic. After nine seasons and 202 episodes, plus a couple of films, the whole thing seemed to have gone away. Until, that is, the six-episode revival two years ago, which proved to be a tad disappointing. Now it’s back for a new run of ten episodes, which will apparently also be the last we see of Anderson’s iconic Agent Scully.
THE MYTHOLOGY
The new series picks up where we left off in 2016, by which point the ongoing underlying “mythology” of the show had reached head-spinningly complex proportions. We had a global conspiracy plotted by a mysterious elite, involving the planting of a virus containing alien DNA (stick with us) designed to kill off weak humans and leave only a bunch of strong survivors. Somehow, Mulder and Scully’s long-lost son seems to be the key to stopping this plot, perhaps because Scully’s got alien elements in her DNA. Now she’s seriously ill, and having visions involving every conspiracy known to man, while their long-time nemesis known as Cigarette Smoking Man seems to be pulling all the strings. And Mulder and Scully really need to find their son…
STRANGER THINGS
The season premiere is a breathless and fun thriller touching on everything that’s happened to Mulder and Scully, and their adventure is as giddily entertaining as ever. But from then on, we get eight mostly “standalone” stories in which they get to explore lots of juicy, strange phenomena. All in all, a step up from the previous revival series. ★★★★ Boyd Hilton