Television

“I suspect when we come back we'll be in the middle of a presidential election”, Kevin Spacey told us back in November. The cameras were still rolling back then on Season Four of House of Cards as a group of HFPA journalists visited the usually closed set.

And so here they are: on the cusp of the events that would become the bulk of the 20th Century’s legacy, seasoned but still optimistic, at the end of tumultuous but glorious journey. Through six seasons of Downton Abbey the Crawleys, their servants and extended family and the inhabitants of the fictitious village neighboring their estate dealt with the sinking of the Titanic, the Spanish Flu epidemic, World War I, Irish nationalism, the rise of the Labour party, the first seeds of Nazism and the movement for women’s right to vote.

There are successful shows, popular shows and then there are iconic shows. The X-Files undoubtedly belongs to the latter, a rarefied category of series that changed the face of television and, during its original 9 run, arguably, popular culture.