FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are assigned to the X-Files, the department dealing with inexplicable phenomena -- flying saucers, killer mutants, werewolves, bigfoot, etc. -- the bureau can't officially acknowledge. Meanwhile, other factions in power know all about aliens and monsters, and pull strings to frustrate Mulder's quest for a truth which is 'out there'. And factions within factions betray the conspiracy by doling out information to the heroes.



Writer-producer Chris Carter was inspired by earlier paranoid sci-fi/horror shows (The Invaders, Project UFO, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Twin Peaks) but spun The X-Files into a ten-year run by combining weird stuff which industry wisdom deemed a turn-off with police procedural business in the manner of Thomas Harris and, crucially, a developing but ambiguous relationship between coolly sexy leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson which evoked successful TV teamings like Steed and Mrs Peel on The Avengers, Maddie and David on Moonlighting and Starsky & Hutch. They were professional partners, but undercurrents suggested they were potentially a lot closer.

When the show first aired, the nascent Fox network thought a comedy western with Bruce Campbell (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.) would be their break-out hit and were surprised by its runaway success. Among other things, The X-Files brought TV fantasy back from the wilderness (leading to such hits as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes and revivals of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica) and put imported American series back on UK primetime TV.



The mannerisms were always easy to parody, though the show was among the first to salt slyly satiric jabs at itself in the occasional comedy episodes ("that's supposed to be a name?" a suspect responds when presented with a card reading 'Fox Mulder'), and its 'mythology' episodes (an ongoing storyline about alien abductions and the hero's complicated family) eventually strangled the series to the point when few could actually follow successive, contradictory revelations (and Duchovny's semi-escape from later seasons didn't help).

But the series managed more than enough outstanding episodes to qualify among the greats of pop TV -- as a cop show, a horror show, a conspiracy saga and a workplace romance.