Millennium

I don't think I've ever fully gotten over the cancellation of Millennium. Re-watching the old episodes on the FX channel, you can really see how well written most of the episodes were and the characters were all memorable and likeable. Right up until the very last season, where I personally feel the writers ruined the series. The two episodes, the cliffhanger before the last season, were incredibly well done, I'd even say masterpieces, titled "The Four Horsemen" and "The Time is Now". But they missed the point when they came back the next season. We were expecting to see the series go in the direction of Frank and his daughter trying to survive a holocaust and instead they copped out. We could have had an amazing survival story there. What a shame. But, I highly recommend watching the reruns of this series if you can. It really was so much better than the X Files. And it will forever be sorely missed. The character of Frank Black did guest star on an X File episode after Millennium was cancelled and I'm still hoping for at least one more appearance. It's so hard to let a good character go forever.

Now that all the three (3) season have been released on DVD, it's time to look into this Chris Carter show always overshadowed by The X-Files.

I always thought Millennium was always more realistic of the two. Sure, sometimes there was some paranormal stuff going on, but not in a way that in x-files. Millennium has more of a horror-thriller-like vibe, where The X-Files focuses on UFOs and extraterrestrial activity.

There IS a sort of a continuous storyline included, so i totally recommend getting at least the two first seasons, and watching as many episodes in a row as possible. Definitely darker, and more violent than the X-Files.

This is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking series that has come out in a long time. If we were able give it a vote, I would give it a 10/10.

Very few people understood what Millennium was about, but for its fans, it remains a very stirring drama. A lot of critics misrepresent Millennium as some kind of gloomy police drama, when the cases that Frank Black investigated during the course of season one were merely vehicles in which to explore the grayer shades of humanity.

Only about half of the twenty-two episodes during the first season were concerned with just serial killers--far less than critics like to think. Look closer and you'll see that episodes like the pilot, "Gehenna," "The Judge" and "Sacrament" had supernatural/apocalyptic elements to them, which make them far less mundane than some might initially think. ("Gehenna" even had visuals of a winged beast, or Legion as the fans dubbed him, descending from the sky.)

Regarding those other, say, eight or ten serial killer episodes, Millennium addressed the big questions: What made these men? What can society do to stop them? You won't hear the investigators on CSI or Law & Order ask these questions, unless in a glib, sarcastic way. Those programs are all about police procedure. To me, *that's* depressing. When Frank looked 'into the minds of killers,' he was trying to understand them, sometimes even sympathize with them. These killers weren't evil people. They were tragic people that did evil things--most were victims themselves. Millennium gave human faces to ghastly perpetrators.

The latter season one episodes stray from the serial killer motifs. "Force Majeure" involves a man in an iron lung who preaches about a planetary alignment that will have cataclysmic consequences. "Walkabout" sheds light on Frank's past when he participates in a clinical trial for an experimental drug that might suppress his 'gift.' "Maranatha" takes Frank to the Russian district of New York in pursuit of Yaponchik, who may be the Antichrist. And then there's the stunning "Lamentation"/"Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" two-parter, in which devils and angels aren't merely a concept, but physically exist alongside Frank and his colleagues!

Millennium also isn't relentlessly gory or downbeat. Look at the endings of "The Well Worn Lock," "Powers," or especially "The Wild and the Innocent"--still one of the most uplifting hours of television I've seen to this day. A lot of the show's early work is about criminals taking responsibility, victims learning to heal, and how Frank, and his family and friends, come to an understanding about Why Bad Things Happen. Don't be so dark, critics. Millennium--seriously!--is not.

Season two of Millennium is nothing short of brilliant, but the foundation is laid here. Strong scripts, talented actors, exceptional production values, and timeless themes (the tolls of work on family life, humanity's struggle with evil, temptations of the Devil, faith and religion, corruptions in governments and organizations) make all three seasons of Millennium a MUST BUY. Don't let mistaken critics, or lackluster DVD sets (a show this rich needs more commentary!), dissuade you from owning one of the best shows of the 90's, nay, of all time.

Singers or rock bands will release an album. It may be their first and sometimes that album can be very successful selling copies by the bucketful and then when it comes to their follow up they disappoint. Sometimes the quality of that second album is higher than the first, but the case is the mainstream are either disappointed, or not interested. So it is with Chris Carter's Millennium, the second series he made after the mammoth success of his breakthrough series The X Files. Whereas The X Files is about how their is light at the end of that dark journey you may journey, Millennium was always about the opposite and thus the tone of the show was set and it may have led to the disappointing ratings and a sudden cancellation after three seasons. This is a shame as this was undeniably one of the finest television dramas ever created, giving us one of the best central performances in a television drama series and giving us sixty odd episodes of thought provoking if very disturbing drama.

Whereas The X Files gave the audience a quirky set of characters in the shape of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, Millennium gave us the dark, secluded and world weary Frank Black, a man who investigated cases of serial killer using a unique, almost clairvoyant like ability to see what the killer was able to see. This set up was fantastic and like The X Files paved the way for over twenty mini movies a season. The stories were frequently clever and very well told and the main performance from Lancer Henriksen, the most underrated actor if there ever was one, was a sight to watch. The series was frequently disturbing, offering some of the most graphic images on mainstream network American television, the stories were hard hitting (incest and child molestation was dealt with at one point) and even the dip into X Files-esque waters worked as the paranormal element usually had something to do with the end of the world thus sometimes facilitating an explanation as to why so many bad things were happening in the world all of a sudden.

The thing was viewers were not prepared for this in light of The X Files. While both shows had the same creator and the same writers and directors, there was no break from the inherent darkness of Millennium. The X Files would counter balance the conspiracy and horror stories with episodes of light humor and whimsical comedy, but here there was not. Even the odd comedy episode had darker elements. A cross over with The X Files would see the character of Jose Chung appear. He was dead at the end of the episode he appeared in. It was story developments like these that let one know that this was not show of optimism and hope, even if the title sequence tried to tell us that. Nope, Millennium was dark, hideous and violent, but it was still a great show that was never given much of a chance. The critics outside of horror and science fiction circles didn't like it and audiences found it too much, but there was denying that this was a superb show.

Like The X Files the visual level and production values were superb and the moody Vancouver locations worked a charm, whilst there was rarely ever a bad episode. Here's hoping time will catch up with this fantastic show and that maybe some day an audience will appreciate it fully.