The Lone Gunmen is a
television show created by
Chris Carter and broadcast on
FOX. It was a
spin-off of Carter's popular long-running television series
The X-Files and a part of
The X-Files franchise, starring several of the show's characters.
The Lone Gunmen was first broadcast in March
2001 and, despite positive reviews, its
ratings dropped. The program was
cancelled after thirteen episodes. The last episode was broadcast in June 2001 and ended on a
cliffhanger which was partially resolved in a ninth-season episode of
The X-Files entitled "
Jump the Shark".
The series revolved around the three characters of
The Lone Gunmen:
Melvin Frohike,
John Fitzgerald Byers and
Richard Langly, a group of "geeky" investigators who ran a
conspiracy theory magazine. They had often helped FBI Special Agent
Fox Mulder on
The X-Files.
Typical plots
Unlike
The X-Files, whose storylines dealt mainly with supernatural creatures and government alien conspiracies, episodes of
The Lone Gunmen generally featured more "plausible" plots, such as government sponsored terrorism, the creeping government-induced police state surveillance society, cheating husbands, corporate crime, arms-dealers, and escaped Nazis. The show had a light atmosphere and focused heavily on physical comedy. The trio were often aided (and sometimes hindered) by a mysterious thief named Yves Adele Harlow (
Zuleikha Robinson).
The plot of the first episode, which aired March 4,...
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