Millennium is a television series produced by The X-Files creator Chris Carter, and set during the years leading up to the dawning of the new millennium.
The series aired from 1996 to 1999 on the Fox Network. Season one and two were shown e.tv in South Africa; the third and final season was never shown.
Lance Henriksen headlined the series as investigator Frank Black, a freelance forensic profiler and former FBI agent with a unique ability to "see the world through the eyes" of serial killers and murderers, though he was not psychic.
Carter pitched Millennium to Fox as "Seven in Seattle." The setting of a dark, rain-soaked city and a world-weary detective's hunt for a religiously-inspired serial killer have clear parallels with the pilot episode.
The pilot served to introduce the Black family, consisting of Frank, wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and daughter Jordan (Brittany Tiplady).
The family was depicted returning to Seattle where Frank was born and raised, because Frank wanted to protect his family from the evil with which his job as a criminal profiler with the FBI brought him into daily contact.
The end of the episode saw Frank receiving a series of Polaroid photographs of his wife and daughter in an envelope with no return address, setting up a stalking thread that would be resolved in the second season.
Black's initial encounter with the Millennium Group came in the person of Peter Watts (Terry O'Quinn). The Group was depicted as an association of former law-enforcement professionals called in to consult on crimes by other law-enforcement agencies.
The Group recognised that Black had a unique gift for profiling, as he was able to see into the minds of the perpetrators and deduce motive and psychological make-up based on crime scene evidence.
In contrast, the Group was presented as a complex, multi-facted entity during the second season.
Carter had left day-to-day production of the series in the hands of Glen Morgan and James Wong, a writing/producing team who had previously worked with Carter on The X-Files and co-created the short-lived series Space: Above and Beyond.
Morgan and Wong essentially took the underlying religious themes of the first season and made them explicit in the origin and nature of the Group, which we learned was divided into two opposing factions, the Owls and the Roosters.
The Owls believed in a secular Millennium where mankind could be guided through the potential disasters of the year 2000 and prepared for an astronomical event that was due to occur in the 2060s.
Conversely, the Roosters believed in the Biblical "End Times" foretold in the Revelation of St. John the Divine. They sought to control the destruction through the release of a modified Marburg virus to which they had an antidote that was given only to select members.
The motives of Black's patron in the organisation, Peter Watts, were called into question when it was revealed that Watts had received protection for his family from the viral contagion, but had not moved to protect Catherine and Jordan Black from the plague.
The final season showed Black returning to Washington and to profiling work at the FBI. He is joined by a young, black female partner, Emma Hollis. The Millennium Group is shown at a distance, as Frank is alienated from Peter Watts.
Later in the season, the demonic entity dubbed Legion assumes the form of one of the Group's security men. The implication is that the Group have become corrupted by the very evil it was intended to fight against.
Despite Frank's warnings and the evidence of her own eyes, Emma makes a commitment at a moment of personal weakness that sees her isolated from all non-Group assistance, and Frank is last seen escaping from Washington, having taken Jordan from school.