Monday

The X-Files

9pm, Channel 5

2016 is all well and good, if you like that sort of thing, but in recent weeks, the best quality time my TV set and I have spent together has come when we’ve dimmed the lights to binge on the old episodes of The X-Files Channel 5 has put up on its on-demand service, in anticipation of the new revival landing this week.

It’s not as if I needed reminding. The X-Files arrived fully formed, and instantly stuck to your brain. When it launched in 1993, it was clear where it came from: its parents were Twin Peaks and The Silence Of The Lambs, the twin phenomena that suddenly gave FBI agents a dark and groovy mystic pop sheen, positing them as the soberly-suited knightly frontline in the fight against monsters both from out there, in the depths of space and supernature, and deep inside, from the recesses of the human psyche.

Chris Carter’s show took lots from Thomas Harris and David Lynch, but mixed in tasty dollops of The Twilight Zone and EC Comics, a hip paranoia, and the greatest will-they-won’t-they TV has yet seen. The brew made the best X-Files the best fun around, and still works: watching these fast, shivery, odd and sharply-etched old stories again two decades on is genuinely refreshing. But one of Carter’s other canniest additions also proved the show’s ultimate undoing.

The X-Files arrived when, outside soap opera, story-of-the-week was still the dominant form in American series. From the pilot on, though, The X-Files teased a larger arc: Fox Mulder’s fight to uncover a vast, half-glimpsed government-alien conspiracy, all the Smoking Man stuff. For a while, as that underlying narrative grew, it worked, and was hooky as hell. But as it came to dominate, the fun leaked away. By the time the original TV run ended in 2002, the show had tied itself in dour, exhausted knots over a Big Truth it was difficult to care about.

It’s been eight years since we saw David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully, in the 2008 movie I Want To Believe, but, in a fittingly inexplicable time-mystery way, it seems longer. This six-episode reboot (which also features old faces like Mitch Pileggi as FBI boss Skinner, and…some others) benefits from that. It just feels great to see them again. But soon, fear sets in. Which X-Files are we getting? The fun, creepy files, or the grim, convoluted ones?

The answer is…both. The opener, which seeks to recap a 20 year backstory for newcomers, reassure the faithful it hasn’t forgotten it, and spin the whole thing off in a new way for everyone, gets understandably bogged down. For stretches it’s oddly lifeless, before climaxing with a jabbering new apocalyptic conspiracy revelation that feels like being trapped in a lift with a cult member.

All the way, though, the Duchovny-Anderson chemistry crackles, exactly because it is older and wrung through life, and the sheer madness of the story is admirable, as is the resolutely old-school vibe: they’re still using the 1993 titles, which had me punching the air.

It’s in the subsequent episodes, however, that the X-Files thing really kicks in. Part two is much more like it, a creepy-crazy story involving experimental labs and a guy stabbing himself in the brains, while Duchovny recovers his off-kilter balance and Anderson’s sangfroid melts. Then, episode three is the business. It’s called “Mulder & Scully Meet The Were-Monster” and, I mean – come on. This can work. I believe.

Sunday

Storyville: The Toughest Horse Race In The World – Palio

9pm, BBC Four

A horse race unlike any other, the Palio takes place twice each summer in the Italian city of Siena, as, in a tradition dating back beyond the 16th century, 10 brightly costumed jockeys representing each of the city’s districts gather to thunder bareback and hell for leather three times around the Piazza Del Campo, while their highly partisan fans frenzy on the sidelines. Director Cosima Spender’s vibrant documentary doesn’t so much explore the race as put you right in the middle of the danger and display. We glimpse some of the history (and corruption) that surrounds the event, but the focus is squarely on the jockeys and the fiercely competitive trainers, most of whom are former riders themselves. At the centre unfolds the epic rivalry between an older jockey with 13 wins to his name and a rising young protégé; but it’s the sheer spectacle of the event that dominates here – especially when Spender offers a horse’s-eye view of proceedings.

Tuesday

Happy Valley

9pm, BBC One

The first series of writer Sally Wainwright’s cop drama became a word-of-mouth sensation last year, largely due to the rare alchemy that happens when an actor and a character go click: in this case the great Sarah Lancashire, playing Catherine Cawood, a woman facing her fifties and dealing with guilt and anger, working as a sergeant on the beat in a depressed West Yorkshire town. With a plot concerning a kidnapping that spiralled out of control, and an ensemble including George Costigan and Siobhan Finneran, it grew into something like Ken Loach reworking Fargo. This series begins 18 months on from the traumatic events that saw Catherine almost beaten to death by the psychotic Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton, who also returns). She’s back on the beat, but a routine shift soon turns to nightmare following the discovery of a body. The admirable Coronation Street diaspora vibe is heightened by the presence of Julie Hesmondhaigh, Katherine Kelly and Amelia Bulmore, while Shirley Henderson and Matthew Lewis offer something for the Harry Potter crowd.

Wednesday

How To Die: Simon’s Choice

9pm, BBC Two

In January 2015, Simon Binner was told he had an aggressive form of motor neurone disease, and had two years left to live. Within two weeks of that diagnosis, the disease had already robbed him of his voice, and the ravages of a very rapid physical decline were underway. This film, which documents his decision to end his own life at a Swiss clinic rather than wait for the illness to kill him, and the struggles his friends and family face in coming to terms with his wishes, is destined to be controversial. But it seeks to maintain sober distance, even as events grow increasingly poignant and painful. Directed by Rowan Deacon, the documentary not only records Simon’s determination to end his life and the torture of the illness that led him there, but also offers glimpses of a life lived and loved, and the torment as his loved ones grapple with the dilemmas and ramifications of his choice. A hard watch, but a humane film, and a valuable one.

Thursday

Heroin: Cape Cod USA

9pm, Sky Atlantic

Smalltown USA is facing a rising heroin problem. In the past 15 years, deaths from overdoses have more than quadrupled across the nation; in 2014, the state of Massachusetts alone recorded over 1,250 heroin deaths. This intimate and unsparing film by director Steven Okazaki considers the epidemic by focusing up close on eight addicts in the seemingly idyllic Massachusetts resort Cape Cod, where 85 per cent of crimes today are related to the drug. The picture postcard backdrop – all pristine white beaches, lighthouses and quaint villages – and the youth of the subjects, who are all in their twenties, throws the problem into stark relief. While recording the numbing realities of their daily existence, an endless cycle of getting cash, getting high, recovery and relapse, Okazaki also talks with the parents and doctors struggling to cope, and considers some of the possible roots of the current crisis, why so many young people are getting hooked, and why the heroin is so seemingly affordable and so easily acquired.

Friday

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story Of Cannon Films

10.55pm, Film4

Fans of 1980s trash – and who isn’t – will find much to treasure in director Mark Hartley’s slam-bang tribute to the Cannon Group, the film company whose logo was to be found on some of the most delirious VHS covers of the period; covers that nine times out of ten guaranteed an entertainingly terrible B-movie experience inside: check out 1986’s enthusiastic Chuck Norris-Lee Marvin mega hook-up The Delta Force for a classic example. With contributions from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Barry Humphries and Alex “Bill & Ted” Winter, Hartley lays out the rise and fall of the company, which really came into its own when hustling Israeli producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus took over in 1979. (Golan and Globus are themselves absent, because, amazingly enough, they were working on a rival documentary about Cannon, The Go Go Boys, at the same time.) Really, though, it’s the welter of brilliantly schlocky clips from the movies that will leave you wishing you could head down to Ritz Video straight afterwards.

Saturday

Trapped

9pm, BBC Four

It’s Saturday night, it’s BBC Four, and it’s a horribly mutilated unidentified corpse discovered floating in a fjord. Yes, they’ve finally worked the Montalbanos out of their system again, and it’s back into the shivering territory of Nordic noir. Going out in the traditionally satisfying double bills, this chilly 10-part series is notable for being the brainchild of Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelandic director behind the excellent movies 101 Reykjavík and Jar City, who brings pace, offbeat attitude and whole weather systems of atmosphere to proceedings. That anonymous corpse is discovered just as the international ferry is pulling into the port of an isolated town in the remote northeast of the country…and just as a raging blizzard arrives to cut the place off from the outside world. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson stars as Andri, the bearlike local police chief leading the hunt for the killer and soon feeling out of his depth, as fear and cabin fever close in. Killing fans will recognise Bjarne Henriksen as the ferry captain who seems to know something…