Everything you need to know about Twin Peaks
Missed the cult series first time round? Tristram Fane Saunders tells you what you need to know
When the groundbreaking 1990s TV drama Twin Peaks returns to our screens for a third series this week, it will be a mere 26 years since its last episode. If it seems odd for a show to take a breather for more than a quarter of a century, don’t be surprised: the unusual – as well as the dark, dodgy and downright weird – was always Twin Peaks’s stock-in-trade.
In 1990, more than 30 million Americans tuned in to watch the pilot episode of David Lynch’s psycho-drama, when the body of high-school prom queen Laura Palmer was found on a river bank in the logging town five miles south of the Canadian border.
The investigation into Palmer’s murder was merely the catalyst for a series of mind-bending, macabre and surreal events. But it was the cast of oddball characters that really made the show a cult TV classic – and most of them are back in the latest series.
Investigating Palmer’s death was FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), rarely seen without some “damn fine coffee” or his voice-activated dictaphone.
If you weren’t there first time round, here are the things to know:
It all sounds mightily odd. Who’s responsible?
The show came from a fusion of two very different talents. First, Mark Frost – a TV writer who cut his teeth on NBC police drama, Hill Street Blues. The magic came from pairing him with auteur David Lynch, director of Eraserhead, a 1977 arthouse horror, and mid-Eighties suburban noir Blue Velvet. With Twin Peaks, they changed the face of modern television.
Why is it so important?
At the time, critics were bewildered that a major film director such as Lynch, fresh from the success of The Elephant Man, would want to direct a cop show-cum-soap opera for the small screen. But Twin Peaks proved that popular, mass-audience TV could aspire to the status of high art.
Since then, the line between film Remind me: who killed Laura Palmer?
That’s a complicated question. The simple answer is that it was her father, Leland, a psychopath with a split personality. Leland’s alter-ego, “Bob”, sexually abused Laura for years before killing her. Agent Cooper came to believe that Leland was possessed by a demon from another world, a place called the Black Lodge.
At the end of the last series, Cooper had ended up in the Black Lodge himself, after breaking in to rescue his girlfriend, a runaway nun called Annie. Meanwhile, evil killer Bob was back on the rampage, disguised as I’m not sure I understand. But why the long wait for its return? Though Twin Peaks won three Golden Globe awards, the show was cancelled after the second series due to falling ratings. A 1992 spin-off film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, was met with vicious reviews, but it has since been reappraised.
However, a third series was somehow inevitable. During the original run, Cooper dreams that Laura tells him: “I’ll see you again in 25 years.”
So are the old gang back together? Almost. All 18 episodes of the new series have been written and directed by Frost and Lynch. Impressively, the pair have reassembled more than 30 members of the original cast. However, Joan Chen, who played lumber-mill heiress Josie, won’t be returning. Her character was last seen trapped inside a doorknob. She may have been stuck there ever since.