4. Inspiring Every Supernatural Investigator Show EverKolchak: The Night Stalker
Darren McGavins Carl Kolchak was a character whose acquaintance I only met once or twice while growing up, until in the mid 90s, around the time I was starting high school, the Sci-Fi Channel started showing Kolchak: The Night Stalker in repeats and I was hooked. Two months later, a brand new show appeared on Fox, the creator giving credit to Night Stalker as inspiration; it was called The X-Files and the pop-culture ripple it began can be traced all the way back, not just to the Night Stalker series, but to the two superior TV movies that preceded it. Matheson, a scriptwriter for both the original movie, The Night Stalker and its effective follow-up, The Night Strangler, did some of his finest character work there, and as a result a horror TV staple was born; the quintessential shabby underdog, questing for the fantastic under the mundane. McGavins Kolchak was such a likable screen presence that he often made up for the downright doltish storylines that appeared in the series, although Mathesons movie plots were well-crafted pieces of moody dread. Fox Mulder, Frank Black, Sam and Dean Winchester, Buffy Summers, Angel, Harry Dresden, even Agents Olivia Dunham and Dale Cooper probably owe Matheson and his most irascible creation, Carl Kolchak, some ancestral thanks.