Thirty-three years after the X-Files pilot, Mulder and Scully still beat Sherlock and Watson — Holmes had a sidekick, Mulder had an equal
Convinced Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s Sherlock double act is unbeatable — meet the characters who top them.
If you want to see a true partnership at work on telly, forget half the moody duos and forced 'witty banter' that's being peddled these days. For me, the gold standard is still The X-Files — specifically, Mulder and Scully. However much you like your Sherlock and Watsons, there's something about the mix of Mulder's endless conspiracy rabbit-holes and Scully's raised eyebrow that just hasn't been matched, before or since.
Everyone's got their favourite detective pair. The BBC's Sherlock (that kicked off back in 2010, if you can believe it) had Cumberbatch and Freeman playing Holmes and Watson with lots of slick dialogue, high-speed deductions, and a level of tension that made you wonder if they'd ever just go down the pub together and relax. Good fun, but a bit too neat if you ask me. Compare that to the weird, fraught, sometimes genuinely tender rapport between Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) — that's where the real magic is. If anyone understands working alongside someone who sees the world completely differently to you, it's these two.
The X-Files first landed on TV back in 1993 and ran for 11 seasons (plus two middling films for the curious and/or completionists).
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The Beginnings: Sceptic Meets True Believer
Right from the pilot episode (which aired 10 September 1993, not that you need reminding), you get thrown into their dynamic. Scully gets foisted onto Mulder's pet project investigating 'unexplained phenomena', and the man himself is already convinced that aliens are nicking people and cropping up in small-town forests. Typical. Despite Scully's no-nonsense, scientifically-grounded approach, she doesn't come across as some blinkered killjoy. She gives as good as she gets, and you can see in every scene she's one of the few people willing to challenge Mulder and not just brush him off as the office weirdo.
The real turning point for a lot of fans is that slightly awkward but oddly touching moment in the motel, where Scully asks Mulder to check a series of marks on her back. Yes, objectively it turns out to be mosquito bites, but the scene gives away a side of Scully that's way more vulnerable and open than her first impression lets on. They're sizing each other up, figuring out where the boundaries lie, and already developing a rapport that's built on respect, even if their beliefs never quite sync up.
The Formula That Actually Works
Unlike so many onscreen partnerships, their trust never feels forced. Scully isn't just humoured by Mulder's theories — she learns from him, challenges him, and isn't afraid to admit when she might be wrong (even if she never says it out loud). You can see it shift her over time, making her a better agent and maybe even a better person. At the same time, Mulder actually makes room for Scully's rationality, even if he's halfway out the door chasing his latest spooky hunch.
Contrast with Holmes and Watson: they're mates, sure, but there's always that fundamental imbalance — Sherlock's 'the genius', Watson tags along. With Mulder and Scully, it's genuinely about equals working side by side, their differences making the cases (and the whole series) so much richer. And here's the kicker — when The X-Files came back for season 10 (after more than a decade away), those two stepped right back into their old rhythm as if they'd never left. No melodramatic reunion, no 'what have we become' nonsense. Just straight back to business: Scully rolling her eyes, Mulder obsessing over government cover-ups, the pair of them saving each other's lives by the end of episode one.
A Bond Forged in Monster Mayhem
If you're after evidence of their chemistry (beyond the thousand memes and fanfics), try S10, episode 4, 'Home Again'. There they're dealing with the Band-Aid Nose Man (which is every bit as grotesque as it sounds), but the real heart's in how they navigate Scully's anguish over her son, William. All through that storyline, there's this palpable sense that these two have been through more together than any normal co-worker ever could. The job has near killed them — literally, in Scully's case, several times — but it's also tied them together in ways that, for my money, wipe the floor with most TV 'friendship' arcs.
The partnership between Mulder and Scully is proof that even the most polar opposites can build something unbreakable, especially if you've got a few alien autopsies and a conspiracy or two to work through together.
Sherlock and Watson might have had the jump on literary legacy, but Mulder and Scully outstrip them when it comes to real, complicated, lived-in partnership. Across all those series, monsters, and inexplicably damp forests, they showed you don't have to agree to work brilliantly side by side. Even if, now and then, you'd swear one of them was about to throttle the other.