THE X FILES, C5, 9pm
Is The X Files really Doctor Who for grown-ups? If so, then it fills a gap and it’s a pity to see it relegated to Channel 5. Finding a home there might deter some people from watching, either because they’d never, in their wildest dreams, think of consulting that channel’s listings or because an appearance on 5 cheapens a show: it can’t be any good if it’s on that channel, surely?
But it is. The first episode of its new series is everything the hardcore fans, and those who think Doctor Who is just a little bit childish, will adore.
The story goes back to basics, opening in New Mexico in 1947 with the infamous Roswell Incident. The plot leaps back and forth between the 40s and the present-day, where a right-wing conspiracy theorist asks Mulder and Scully to reunite and lend him their expertise so he can “blow open the evillest conspiracy the world has ever known.” Scully is as sceptical as ever, and even Mulder says “I only want to believe. Actual truth has been harder to come by.”
Their new chum takes them to New Mexico where they meet a girl who claims to have been abducted and repeatedly impregnated by aliens who took the babies before they were born.
So will they find the desert scattered with alien children and wrecked spacecraft, and is there a massive government conspiracy to cover it up?
RICK STEIN’S TASTE OF SHANGHAI, BBC2, 9pm
Is Rick Stein a chef or an intrepid TV traveller? Is he Michael Palin with an apron and a fish slice? His last cookery series sent him on a culinary journey from Venice to Istanbul, and now he’s packed his suitcase again to explore the food in Shanghai. He wants to discover whether this massive modern city has retained its traditional Chinese food. “We all love a Chinese,” he tells us, though perhaps not when the dish involves “hairy crabs”.
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