This is really just for me to obsess over the new X-Files film now there are little titbits of information and a few stills around.

I so hope that there's still enough interest to make this a success.

I really think it's going to be excellent. They're going to have a sort of post-90s cynicism hanging over everything. People are so used to conspiracy stuff now that I think we just take it for granted, but the focus has shifted, the things we worry about now are things like climate change, like the way that wars and disasters seem to be perpetuated by capitalism - the horrors of this century are even worse than those of the last and I reckon they'll overshadow this film, even though it sounds like the story is more localised this time. Mulder and Scully will be older, more depressed than ever, careworn. I wonder what William will look like now.

They always used to do serial killer/forensic science stories really really well, and I think they had a lot of impact on shows such as Dexter and Bones. And in some of their finest episodes (eg Home, or in a different way, Paper Hearts) I think they did have that that-much-darker edge; but they did also tend towards over-seriousness a bit, and I think they'll have learned in turn from newer sensibilities and there'll be a bit more blood, gore, grim humour.

Also Xzibit is in it, which, you know, is going to be aces.

I've been meaning to buy up all the old X-Files episodes on second-hand DVD and start from the beginning, because I loved it back in the day, before it disappeared up its own arse with the whole labyrinthine conspiracy plot. I might try a bit harder to follow it up the aforementioned arse this time.

I interviewed Gillian Anderson once, you know. She had a screaming baby in the room, and a Meat Loaf CD on the stereo.

Some of those one- or two-part episodes, away from the increasingly tedious story arc, were absolutely fantastic. It had that grim, downbeat hopelessness that inspired stuff like Millennium (Lance Henriksen, not Robbie Williams) but with real moments of humour (I'm imagining Gillian Anderson eating that bug at the end of the freakshow/circus episode) and a lightness that the imitators never really matched.

You've MET Gillian? What was she like? A friend of mine had dinner with her once in Vancouver and said she spent the whole evening snogging her husband (this was the first one).

And you can't go wrong with any of the first 5 series, really. 6 and 7 have great moments too but are a bit more patchy.

There was loads of humour in the X-Files at the start.

The funniest episode was the one where Mulder swapped bodies with this horrible lech CIA agent, played by Michael McKean from Spinal Tap.

I always used to fall asleep through The X Files. Without fail. Ten minutes in, I'd be there on the sofa, head back, rivulet of dribble trickling down the side of my cheek.

I mean, despite myself - I did like the few minutes I caught before succumbing to the urge to nod off.

That was in series 6 Mitch! Dreamland.
Yeah they did humour really well. Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'; Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose; Bad Blood; Home; War of the Coprophages, the aforementioned Humbug, and now I realise what a colossal nerd I sound like so I'd better stop.

Lyra wrote:

QUOTE:
You've MET Gillian? What was she like? A friend of mine had dinner with her once in Vancouver and said she spent the whole evening snogging her husband (this was the first one).

Honestly, she was a bit boring and humourless.

Maybe I just wasn't asking the right questions, but it was one of those interviews where it never quite clicks.

QUOTE:
A friend of mine had dinner with her once in Vancouver and said she spent the whole evening snogging her husband

I read this a few times before I realised you meant Gillian Anderson was snogging her own husband rather than your friend's.