The X-Files review: Scully science-sighs while Mulder mansplains

Once there was a beloved television programme about intrepid truth-seekers who travelled the byways of America investigating the paranormal. They were driven by the obsessions of a gruff, often incomprehensible iconoclast who was dog-tired of the system’s lies.

But enough about Scooby Doo. The X-Files is back.

Yes, the programme that made sci-fi mainstream and pioneered epic story-arcs on television has returned for six episodes. Here’s what you need to know: Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is an obsessive, conspiracy theorising FBI agent whose laid-back mumble spirals into an excited wordy drawl on exposure to mystery. His sister was abducted by aliens and this has made him weird. He is Han Solo mixed with Comic-Book-Guy. The truth is out there, he believes. He’s a truth addict jonesing for a hit of sweet, sweet truth.

His partner, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), is a calmly-spoken pragmatist. She investigates the same mysteries as Mulder but sceptically, and in heels. A well-placed science-sigh from Scully always undermines the tinfoil-hatted mansplaining of Mulder (I'd love to have been at the meeting where they decided that having him wear an actual tinfoil hat was too on the nose).

Tweak this formula slightly and you have a programme about a paranoid shut-in and his carer, but the writers usually had us veer closer to Mulder’s perspective than Scully’s. We wanted to believe. Sadly the ambitious alien-centric mythology slowly spiralled out of control.

Creator Chris Carter has admitted that they never really planned ahead. Episodes became cries for help as the panic-stricken writers tried to extricate themselves from their own fictional cul-de-sacs. It became hard to believe real government officials could create a massive conspiracy when a room of writers couldn’t sustain a fictional one.

In the new series, Mulder, still a ranting misfit, and Scully, a pioneering doctor, are reunited by rich talk-show host Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale). It’s nice to see them again. They have a uniquely warm, witty television chemistry. “Kiss her you fool!” I shout at Mulder as they dawdle on the street.

The world has changed. When Carter conceived The X-Files, conspiracy theories were counter-cultural incursions from the hippy margins. Now social media abounds with amateur Mulders muttering about chem-trails, while sceptical Scullys are harder to find (killed by fluoride, probably).

O’Malley wants the duo to investigate something. I’ll let you guess. Is it…

a)      Spooky goings-on in the old Withers homestead. “Jiminy jinx! They say that the Old Withers Place is haunted!”

b)      The whereabouts of the Jade Monkey. “I need to get my hands on that monkey! It’s my life’s dream.”

c)      A conspiracy involving aliens. “The most evil conspiracy the world has ever known.”

It’s C.

Amid flashbacks to a crash site in Roswell, O’Malley shows Mulder a spaceship and introduces them to Sveta, who has spent a lifetime being abducted and experimented on. Like many middle-aged men in crisis, Mulder decides this beautiful young woman is “the key to everything.”

A new conspiracy unfolds with unseemly haste and Mulder grips onto it with the enthusiasm of someone who’s believed a few wacky theories in his time. That alien invasion they told us about in the original series? That was a lie to cover the fact that the power elite was using alien technologies (you know - spaceships, cloaking-devices, water meters) to take over the world. Yes, it was humans in a rubber alien mask all along.

In reality, I don’t think the government would bother covering this up. They’d just say, “Yes, we are using alien DNA to create freakish superpowered alien hybrids, but we’re cutting taxes, and look at how well the economy is doing. Do you really want to risk the recovery by throwing in with an inexperienced radical like Fox Mulder?” (This is essentially the platform Fine Gael are running on).

But by the end of the episode, Sveta is killed, the spaceship is destroyed, O’Malley’s truth-telling web show is shut down, Scully reveals she also has alien DNA and the duo rejoin crusty old boss Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) at the FBI. (“Kiss him you fool!” I shout at Mulder.)

Yes, it’s ridiculous. The first episode creakily rehearses old ground and is filled with windy exposition and knowing winks for the x-philes. But Duchovny and Anderson are delightfully watchable, and if you don’t have a warm Pavlovian reaction during the unchanged credit sequence, you may have alien DNA.

The second episode is better - a stand-alone body-horror story about an unexplained death and a mysterious scientist. Despite its pioneering approach to big story-arcs, The X-Files was always at its best with self-contained episodes.

The debut ended with a cameo from the series’ most consistent antagonist, the “cigarette smoking man” (he died, but the writers always had a relaxed attitude to plot holes). “They’ve reopened the X-Files,” he says, smoking a cigarette through a hole in his neck. “And we could have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky kids!”