It's just too bad that the studio's can't see it. The Lone Gunmen complete series is the short lived TV series spin off from the X-files by our lovable counter culture heroes "The Lone Gunmen." No super stud, soap opera models here, just common guys with a flair for conspiracy theories and intrigue, not to mention some just darned funny moments.The series tackles many issues from your favorite childhood TV star, to "Blind Football" to the old urban legend of "The Water Powered Automobile." If you don't find yourself identifying with the three geeks in a personal way, you need to go back to watching Law & Order. They are just like us, which is probably why the money folks couldn't see past it.

The Lone Gunmen was a great fun spin-off of that science fiction series that was rather popular in the 1990s. My favourite of the three main characters is Frohike, as he is the most amusing/tragic/interesting of the three.Byers is the most restrained and paradoxically the most passionate, but his finest hours were in the X-Files episodes involving him and the blonde woman whose name escapes me at this moment - the actress was Signy Coleman - ah yes...Suzanne Modeski? Another X-Files link I Recommend you take up is Millennium - be warned, a lot darker than the X-Files, its nearest relations are the ones involving Donnie Pfaster, and Lance Henriksen is not a happy man - but if dark psychological drama is your bag, check it out.

The pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen is about a US government conspiracy to create a new type of war in order to be able to fuel arms manufacturing. What did they intend to do? Have a passenger plane crash into the World Trade Center. The theory was that no matter what, there would always be some group ready to take responsibility. The pilot was aired March 4, 2001, six months before the Twin Towers were struck by two passenger planes. Quite a coincidence...or not. How do we know what we read in the papers about who was behind the attack was true? How do we know that the "Arab" terrorists weren't terminally ill Americans, whose families were guaranteed to be taken care of forever if the men gave up their lives a little early? Trust no one.

The Lone Gunmen surpassed the X-Files in every conceivable way. It was witty, intelligent, not your typical knuckle-dragger fodder. Parodying many elements of the parent series (as well as other films, such as Mission Impossible or The Green Mile) it was not afraid to poke fun at its self, a refreshing change from the pomposity into which the X-Files too frequently lapsed. Jimmy Bond proved the perfect foil for the antics of Byers, Langley and Frohike with his wholesome apple-pie sense of justice (difficult to play with a straight face, I imagine). I really am at a loss as to why it should have been cancelled since it displayed great potential. Perhaps its initial release came too close to the end of the X-Files, perhaps viewers were suffering from X-Files fatigue. All I can do is recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the adventures of the trio in the original.