Writer Howard Gordon went on to be the showrunner of 24, and created Homeland with Alex Gansa, who was also an X-Files writer. The 1998 series-six episode Drive was written by Gilligan and featured Brian Cranston as a guest star, who shone in the role a decade later Gilligan would cast him as Walter White.ĭuchovny wrote eight episodes and Anderson wrote one. Its most famous graduate was Vince Gilligan, who wrote 30 episodes, directed two and went on to create Breaking Bad.
It was a very male show behind the scenes. And as an incubator for a newer generation, the simple fact that it begat Vince Gilligan is massively significant in terms of giving a voice like that an opportunity."Īs a testing and starting ground for writing and production talent, The X-Files was very important. It was also the show that put Fox as a network on the map pre-cable era. Arc runs though everything now, but they did it before that. It was proper cult telly in the way that cult crosses over and becomes mainstream.
#Diary of an xfile tv#
"Some of the best episodes are just those good, scary monster TV shows, but it was also about the two of them. “It also fed into that post-JFK thing about distrusting the government, and brought everything around the Area 51 thing into a new era. So you had week in, week out episodes, but also this big back story unfolding. It was one of the first 'mythology' shows, the big one obviously being Lost. For a show like that to get the following it did, and have the impact it did and to cross over into the mainstream like it did was huge. "It was on the cusp of the prime geek era, when all of a sudden popular culture occupied the mainstream, because it started off pre-internet. Prime geek eraĭerek O'Connor is a writer, film-maker, and fan. We might like to think of The X-Files as something frivolous, but it changed the course, structure and, perhaps most of all, the feeling of contemporary television.
That philosophy is embedded in so many contemporary television programmes – Making a Murderer, True Detective, Sense8, Heroes, Dexter – whereas the dynamic of Mulder and Scully informs CSI, Bones, The Blacklist, Sherlock, The Doctor Who reboot and more. The sentiment was pretty clear: trust no one. Could there be 24 without The X-Files? Or Numb3rs, Prison Break, Homeland or Scandal? Conspiracy feeds into everything from House of Cards to Mr Robot, but it was The X-Files that brought it beyond JFK truthers into the mainstream. The show's atmosphere of government conspiracy, paranoia and secrecy was also unusual then, whereas now it is an almost saturated television market. Within all of that there was also the will-they-won't-they story of Mulder and Scully, and the mystery of their own personal backgrounds. The wider arc of The X-Files focused on a government conspiracy, the existence of a shadowy group within the US government called the Syndicate, and the alien invasion and colonisation of the Earth they were trying to hide. The structure of the show can be broken into its "monster of the week" episodes and the broader show mythology. Why does this television show matter? The impact of The X-Files is everywhere. Mulder, a misty-eyed mystery-obsessed believer in the paranormal and textraterrestrial Scully a pragmatic sceptic determined to find a sensible answer to her partner's theories. To recap, they are FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, a duo with chemistry so fizzing they inspired a Catatonia song, the ultimate late 1990s accolade.
#Diary of an xfile series#
On this side of the Atlantic, The X-Files revival begins tonight with a six-part mini- series by the show's original creator, Chris Carter, and starring the original leads, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. The show was an influential precursor to many shows since, a gem of the pre-internet age that became a phenomenon. Into this comes the revival of The X-Files, 14 years after it first wrapped. Television – not film, not music – is the most immediate touchstone for mainstream pop culture. In this golden age, successful film actors, writers, directors and producers think nothing of taking a television gig. In 2016 it is easy to forget there was a time when television was not so hot.
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