There is a thread of real evil running through all three of this evening's drama serials, starting with a true battle between good and evil in The X-Files (Pearl, 8.30pm).
It all begins when Scully's comforter during her recent near terminal bout with a tumour, Father McCue, calls to ask her to come and make sense of the death of a disabled teenager.
Her body is found with its eyes burnt out, and her father reports he last saw her walking out toward a mysterious figure, which is impossible since she had severe spinal abnormalities and could not even stand up.
This is just the beginning of a series of similar deaths and visions and Scully acknowledges the presence of something other-worldly at one point. Mulder for once is the one who flicks through files and waves a prosaic gun about.
Hannah Arendt writing about the horrible revelations of the trial of the Nazi Eichmann, famously described the 'banality of evil'.
In NYPD Blue (Pearl, 9.30pm), evil appears in the ordinary body of a middle-class father, which is, of course, much more frightening than the hocus pocus of angels and devils portrayed in The X-Files.
Several seasons ago, Sipowicz explained to a priest that his faith in human nature had been shattered after years of police work, when he worked on a case of a missing child.
