101 Best Written TV Series

Aired: FOX, 1993-2002

Fox's signature drama for most of the '90s, The X-Files, created by Chris Carter, was one of primetime television's all-time great hit science-fiction series, although to call it sci-fi is requires qualifying that it delved into the paranormal and the conspiratorial. Those tones were leavened by the relationship between FBI partners Scully and Mulder, he the dreamer and she the left-brain skeptic; their dynamic gave the show a human, big-tent appeal. "As early as the third or fourth season," recalled Frank Spotnitz, the show's exec producer and Carter's frequent collaborator, to the WGAW website, "we started to realize that there were some audiences that knew every detail of the ongoing alien mythology storyline and were waiting for very specific questions to be answered and then there was a much larger audience that was vaguely aware of it and would be lost if you tried to answer these very specific questions. That was a balancing act we were engaged in for most of the life of the series."

Credited Writers

David Amann
Gillian Anderson
Dan Angel
Daniel Arkin
Larry Barber
Paul Barber
Mat Beck
Jeffrey Bell
Kenneth Biller
Chris Brancato
Billy Brown
Paul Brown
Chris Carter
Sara B. Charno
William B. Davis
Steve De Jarnatt
David Duchovny
Alex Gansa
William Gibson
Vince Gilligan
R. W Goodwin
Howard Gordon
Charles Grant Craig
David Greenwalt
Jim Guttridge
Ken Hawryliw
Chip Johannessen
Scott Kaufer
Stephen King
Tom Maddox
Steven Maeda
Vivian Mayhew
Valerie Mayhew
Tim Minear
Glen Morgan
Darin Morgan
Kim Newton
Marilyn Osborn
Chris Ruppenthal
Thomas Schnauz
Jessica Scott
John Shiban
Frank Spotnitz
Jeffrey Vlaming
Greg Walker
Mike Wollaeger
James Wong