X marks the spot

What exactly is the appeal of a TV series based on two sour faced FBI agents lashing around America in search of aliens - which they never find? Hopping from one state to the next in a bid to uncover the truth - and never succeeding?

Could it be that a very maudlin Agent Mulder (played by David Duchovny, apparently quite the sexy young thing, if you like little men with questionable hair-dos) and his sceptical-despite-having-been-abducted-by-aliens-herself partner, Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson, apparently quite the sexy young thing if your idea of a good night in is a copy of FHM) feed into an end-of-millennium desperation for "the truth"?

How many of us believe we really know what's going on in the world? In Ireland? At home even?

With its gripping catchphrase, "The Truth is out there", The X-Files exploits a growing global fear that, in the era of the information superhighway, we have absolutely no idea what's going on any more.

Who'd have thought our own Charlie Haughey was so heavily embroiled in financial scandals? - or perhaps the question should be: why wasn't it in the papers 20 years ago? What about Bill Clinton and his inappropriate relationships? Just as Monica Lewinsky goes to testify, the US bombs the Sudan and Afghanistan, and the papers are full of successful US air strikes on Islamic terrorist bases. The Sudanese and others claim the strike was against a pharmaceutical factory - and some commentators insist the whole fiasco was an attempt to deflect press attention from the Lewinsky business and save the president's flagging reputation. Where's the truth in all this? And whatever about world politics, there's that really heavy truth which constantly eludes us: any one out there got a plausible answer to the meaning of life? Is there a God, or could it be that we're all just puppets in a complex intergalactic plot?

Since it first appeared in 1993, The X- Files has played around cleverly with conspiracy theories and aliens, notions which send shivers down the collective spine. Created by the respected writer Chris Carter, it became a cult hit almost immediately. The sixth season starts this autumn in the US (RTE is a season behind). It has won a litany of awards, and millions of fans, and spawned a multi-million pound industry. Its fan base, known as X-philes, are a bunch of devotees who put their Star Trek-loving predecessors, Trekkies, to shame. On the Internet, hundreds of websites and user groups find x-philes obsessively dissecting each episode for vital clues, creating a wider picture which hints at some sort of massive world cover-up, explaining everything from US politics to the death of Princess Diana.

As The X-Files has flipped from series to series, the underlying villain would increasingly appear to be aliens. The film, which came out to mixed reviews during summer, tells us there is indeed an alien plot to overthrow the earth. Some fans see this as a cop-out. By siting the conspiracy literally out of this world, fans' paranoia is shifted safely out of touch with earthly political reality. After all, The X-Files is produced by 20th Century Fox, which is owned by media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. Another conspiracy? Perhaps we shouldn't be so literal. Don't the alien stories return us to the question of the meaning of life?

Writing about human hopes of the reappearance of Christ, psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw UFO-spottings as hightech versions of the second coming. UFOs, more often than not, take the form of "circular symbols of unity which represent a synthesis of the opposites within the psyche", he wrote.

With every X-Files episode, fans build up biographies of each character - from the omnious cigarette smoking baddy to the Lone Gunmen. Of ever-increasing interest is the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder, which reached a climactic point in the film - a kiss, which, in true X- Files mode, didn't quite happen at all.

So, there's paranormal phenomenon, sexual intrigue, and broad references to some sort of extraordinary conspiracy. All this and more make The X-Files one of the most successful and - if the Internet is anything to go by - surely the most interactive TV programmes of all time. It gives us a thrill, to think we are accessing information suppressed by authorities. It feeds on our pre-millennium need for reassurance. As it has been famously said, when people stop believing in religion, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

The truth may be out there, but The X- Files plays on the fact that, sometimes, any old truth will do.