The lone gunmen - Au coeur du complot

Why was this show canceled? WHY????????

The core of the show was a few blokes, and a woman bodge their way through a different story every week, and despite themselves solve the story.

Nothing to mentally strenuous, but still entertaining. Its hard to combine action, comedy and a plot, but the creators of TLG have managed it. And even better than that not gone the teen/buffy route either.

But I go back to my first line... Why was it canceled? Its wasnt low quality, it was well written, shot, etc, etc, just like its stable mate The X-Files.

Please someone pick the franchise up!!!!!!

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.

Amusing, enjoyable, interesting and doesn't insult the intelligence of the viewer? That makes it basically deadmeat as far as US TV executives are concerned. It's really depressing sometimes. We've finally got this ace show in the UK, and I come to IMDB to find out that it's been cancelled.

The Lone Gunmen is a spin-off from the X-Files - but don't let that put you off. This isn't the same kind of po-faced, labyrinthine nonsense that plagues the later years of the parent show. It's fun... and it's about a bunch of people who are individually very good at one thing, suck at everything else. Put them together as a group, and they somehow bungle their way through with amusing results.

It's class, and it's got characters you can identify with and like despite their flaws.

I thought that the 2000-2001 TV season would be a blah year for science fiction after watching the pilot of James Cameron's "Dark Angel." I now see the error of my ways thanks to the Johnny-come-lately superhit "The Lone Gunmen." If I had to sum this show up in a few words, they would be "a futuristic version of 'The A-Team.'" I say that not only because the series follows the extraordinary adventures of four men and one woman who drive around in a van, but also due to the artful mix of adventure, humor, and intrigue that one can look forward to every Friday night with this show. A lot of the pleasure of watching "The Lone Gunmen" derives from the entertaining chemistry among the five main characters (four journalists and a secret agent), all of whom have distinct personalities that transcend stereotype and reveal the best and worst of human nature.

Byers - The straight man. Psychologically, he's the least developed of the five. Cool and professional, he pretty much runs things in the Gunmen's underground newspaper office. Like Fox Mulder from "The X-Files" (the show from which this one was spun off), he wants the truth and nothing but. He's convinced that the U.S. government has countless skeletons in its closet, and he wants to see justice done on behalf of his fellow citizenry. All very admirable, but he doesn't exactly get a lot of yuks.

Frohike - My favorite character on the show. Short, balding, and homely, he nevertheless displays the most humanity of all of them. He's not perfect, and he's often the butt of jokes. Yet even as you laugh at him, you feel for him. He's always ready for action, but his courage is tempered by a somewhat painful realization of the fact that he's hardly flashy and dynamic. Perhaps it's this lack of cockiness that guides Frohike's moral compass; he never fails to help anyone in need. Funny, decent, and eternally sympathetic, Frohike truly is a nice guy who finishes last - but he'll always be first in my book.

Langley - The smarty-pants of the bunch. Nothing out of the ordinary can ever happen without Langley making some sardonic comment about it. With his greasy blond hair, elitist spectacles, and superciliously aquiline nose, Langley would be pretty hard to like if his withering remarks weren't so darn funny. I'd say that roughly 50 percent of the laughs on "The Lone Gunmen" come from Langley's bon mots.

Jimmy - All you really need to know about Jimmy Bond is that he was formerly the coach of a football team composed entirely of blind players. Jimmy is a robust idealist, his eyes so full of stars that one could almost call them galaxies. He can be mind-numbingly naive at times, but his sense of integrity never lets him rest when injustice is done. Don't be fooled by his valley-boy, surfer-dude inflection; Jimmy's more than just another dumb blond.

Eve - This shadowy operative looks and dresses like a grown-up version of Jessica Alba's character from "Angel," and has much of her attitude to boot. Though a casual acquaintance of The Lone Gunmen, Eve is ultimately a tough loner whose penchant for amorality is backed up by a British accent that fairly drips with condescension. Not somebody you'd want to cross, she is. And yet, like all of us, deep down inside all she probably really wants is a few friends. She does manage to help the Gunmen out of many a scrape, and there have been hints that her relationship with Jimmy is not as platonic as it first appears; stay tuned.

Five personalities, all of them strikingly different. Yet when they get together, magic inevitably accompanies the fireworks. It's brilliant ensemble playing like this that puts "The Lone Gunmen" a few notches above the other run-of-the-mill sci-fi shows. On second thought, maybe it's unfair to call it a sci-fi show. I enjoy it simply because it's a humorous, thought-provoking exploration of human nature.

This series is everything that the X-Files used to to be: fast, clever, brash and intelligent, but now they've added one more: funny! I love this show with its eccentric characters, intelligent stories and far-out adventures as it takes us into and tries to prove conspiracies and shadow governments. Almost believable in it's execution, the show deserves to be call a "break-out hit," and a worthy occupant in the vacuum left on Friday in the absence of "Freaky Links" and the new "Dark Shadows." If only "Scariest Places On Earth" ran one hour later, then I wouldn't have to tape and watch one or the other.