On the box

Can anyone explain The X Files phenomenon? The programme's popularity has now gone beyond the culty sci-fi anorak brigade. It won a special viewers' Bafta last week, and the ratings for the week ending 31 March show that an episode of the show gained nearly half a million viewers more than its closest rival on BBC2 (the Grand Prix). And it was a repeat. Spooky.

Political terrorism is also the subject of The Writing on the Wall. Shot in Germany, this new four-part BBC1 serial, to be shown later this year, focuses on the climate in a "new Europe" where British and US military bases in Germany are suffering bomb attacks. And the writer of this searing political drama? None other than the respected actor Patrick Malahide, better known as the heaving buttocks in The Singing Detective, or Inspector Chisholm from Minder.

The BBC is pulling out all the stops to get Into the Light, a new Screen Two film, into the schedules for Saturday 8 June. With the Northern Ireland peace talks due to begin around then, Graham Reid (You, Me and Marley) has penned a vivid tale about the widow (played by Amanda Burton from Silent Witness, right) of a Belfast man gunned down by an anonymous murderer 12 years previously. It is being filmed on location in Belfast over three weeks, to be broadcast while still topical. A true example of rapid-response drama.

ITV was nicked by the third annual performance review published by the Independent Television Commission this week. The watchdog observed that on ITV "both drama and factual programmes focused too frequently on police work and crime". In the week ending 31 March, four of the top-10 ITV shows were crime-related. The Friday episode of The Bill collared 13.68m viewers, and Band of Gold (about prostitutes), Taggart (cops), and Kavanagh QC (lawyers) were not far behind. Perhaps ITV might point out that the customer is always right.