When two TV shows cross over: From The X-Files and Detective Munch, the best clashes of narrative universes

Remember Mare of Easttown, that excellent 2021 miniseries starring Kate Winslet as a detective investigating the murder of a young girl?

It was gritty, textured and gripping. It was also something that was always going to be a one-time thing, and we all accepted it.

Well, a piece of it is coming back. No, it’s not a second season, but it is one of its characters – Lori Ross, Mare’s friend that was played by Julianne Nicholson. Nicholson, like Winslet and co-star Evan Peters, won an Emmy for her performance in the series.

Nicholson has been confirmed as joining the second season of a different HBO crime drama, Task, and the kicker is that she will be reprising the role of Lori Ross.

That’s confirmation that Task and Mare of Easttown exist in the same narrative universe, which works given that both shows are created by writer Brad Inglesby and set in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The crossover is a time-honoured tradition in television, especially in American TV. Networks love making connections between their shows because it has the potential to draw audiences from one to the other. American broadcasters used to save these special events for what was called “sweeps weeks”, when the ratings drove ad rates.

Fans love it because it expands the universe of something they already love, like when Angel and Buffy would visit each other after he left for his own spin-off.

Sometimes these crossovers are a no-brainer, and often exist within the same franchise - it’s not surprising to find the same characters across Law & Order, NCIS, Chicago, CSI or Arrowverse shows (hello, that Supergirl and Flash musical episode!).

Others have been truly oddball, such as that crossover between reality series Cops and the very fictional The X-Files (both were on the Fox network).

That episode, called X-Cops, happened in the seventh season, saw Mulder and Scully’s investigation of a supposed werewolf intersect with the filming of an episode of Cops. It began with the Cops theme song, and was shot on videotape, which was the style of the reality series

The X-Files team hired real sheriff’s deputies as extras the show to give it that layer of authenticity, and brought in a cameraman on who actually worked on Cops, Bertram van Munster.

You might recognise Munster’s name because he went on to co-create The Amazing Race, which was the subject of a crossover-of-sorts this year with Hacks in an episode in which Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) became a participant on a fake celebrity edition of the competition.

That episode also used actual crew from The Amazing Race, host Phil Keoghan played himself, and one of its producers even cameo-d as herself in a scene telling off Deborah for breaking the rules.

Cops wasn’t the only out-of-left-field crossover for The X-Files. Mulder and Scully once made a trip to the 2D world of The Simpsons. They also encountered on their own show a character that may be the MVP of American TV crossovers: Detective John Munch.

Played by the late Richard Belzer, the wry Munch has popped up in the most unexpected of places in addition to his two main TV homes: originally on Homicide: Life on the Street where he appeared in 122 episodes and a movie, and then in 242 episodes of Law & Order: SVU.

Munch’s appearance in The X-Files, as a local Baltimore cop interrogating the show’s supporting characters, The Lone Gunmen, is also a nod to Belzer’s real-life affinity for conspiracy theories.

The character also appeared in two other Law & Order shows, the short-lived cop drama The Beat and on an episode of The Wire, as well as in absurd comedy Arrested Development and as a muppet on Sesame Street.

He was mentioned in the UK series Luther by Idris Elba’s titular character as his NYPD contact, and appeared in cartoon form on American Dad. In theory, that means all those shows exist in the same continuity. Consider that.

There have been some other strange crossovers, either because it was an unexpected pairing because, for example, one was animation and one was not, such as when the live-action series Supernatural teamed with Scooby Doo the cartoon, or when it was two tonally different shows.

For example, at one point, David E. Kelley was a dominant force in network TV with Ally McBeal and The Practice. Now, both series were about lawyers, but one was goofy and the other very serious, so when they came together there were questions on whether it would work: it did, but barely.

Or the time Bones, a crime procedural driven by science, crossed over with Sleepy Hollow, a supernatural series, on an investigation involving headless bodies. It was kind of awkward, but you can’t take it too seriously.

Crossing Jordan, another crime drama, once crashed into Las Vegas, the Jimmy Caan and Josh Duhamel show that is now largely remembered for its 2000s-era obsession with showing a lot of women in bikinis at the pool for no real reason other than the obvious.

Others are more fleeting and made a lot more sense – New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Full House and Family Matters, Archer and Bob’s Burgers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Boy Meets World, and Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder.

Then there was the Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover, a meeting between a wholesome world and a chaotic and snarky one.

Oh hey, that’s in the same geographical place as Task and Mare of Easttown. Who do we have to talk to about a foursome-crossover?