Mulder and Scully search for their missing son…

Get past the first episode – which is the most unbelievable retcon of anything since Bobby Ewing woke up in the shower – and you’ve got a decent selection of X-Files episodes for what I suspect will be the last season of the show, given Gillian Anderson’s comments regarding playing Scully again.

There are what might charitably be described as “marmite” episodes – I personally can’t stand the comedic one with the “missing” agent (Darin Morgan’s The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat), but others have hailed it as one of the best of that sort of episodes that the show has ever done. There’s certainly wider variety than we got in the six-part miniseries back in 2016 – a virtually dialogue-free instalment (Rm9sbG93ZXJz) forces you to watch it more carefully than you might otherwise have done, and spotlights Anderson and Duchovny. And then there’s William. And the Cigarette Smoking Man with yet another version of his past. And a finale that is nowhere near as strong as you want…

The extras make the set worth picking up if you’re an X-Files fan – there’s a look back at the mythology over the whole of the show, and a focus on Scully in three separate features.

Verdict: A couple of the episodes – Ghouli, notably – warrant the show’s return, but overall it stands as a middling year with the mythology bookends the weakest points. Completists will need it, but for others… 6/10

Paul Simpson