Twin Peaks, first broadcast on American network ABC on 8th April 1990, set the standard for television drama for the ensuing two decades. In its landmark two seasons it revolutionized attitudes towards the medium; it invested in high-end production values, cinematic ambition, technique and artistry, and managed a wide array of characters while it traced a long-running, overarching plotline and balanced a host of subplots. It created, and – many argue – perfected what it revolutionized. Without it, it is impossible to imagine the HBO-era and expensive, cerebral series like The Sopranos, Oz, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Lost, The Wire and Mad Men.
A new generation is largely ignorant of its impact, but with Twin Peaks co-creators Mark Frost and David Lynch developed 'water cooler' television that fast became a cornerstone of popular consciousness. The plot centred on the investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington State, led by Special Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, in the role that made him a star. The series also launched the careers of sultry, noir-ish heroines Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn. Each episode (barring a few exceptions) followed one day in the life of Twin Peaks in the aftermath of the grisly discovery, making it utterly compulsive viewing that traced the reverberations through the community, and the subsequent intrigues, humour and horror that were unearthed. It was not innocent of losing its way, the first series was closely controlled by Lynch – he directed many of the episodes and when he didn't he chose from a close circle of associates – but the second series was blighted by studio interference, more wayward plotlines and a lack of interest from Frost and Lynch. But even then it was still compelling drama.
Twin Peaks had a sophisticated sense of its own identity and played with the tropes of television; it was self-consciously soap-like in its handling of the affairs of the town's inhabitants. It deployed the meta-narrative device of using the characters' fascination with trashy soap Invitation to Love to mirror events in the host drama. But what made it really stand out (and what still does) was its tendency to skew events and create an unsettling, off-kilter atmosphere, a sense of reality gone awry. In the second series the soap opera elements and weirdness were both cranked to the maximum, which led many to criticise its loosening grip on the drama and an increasing lack of poise. The irruptions of the dark and uncanny forces at work in the town became more frequent and more terrifying as the series progressed: the Black Lodge, a backwards-talking dwarf (aka The Man From Another Place), the Red Room, one-armed MIKE, a prophetic giant and the log lady established themselves as talking points of the series as much as the more comic strands of ‘damn fine' coffee, the increasingly eccentric Benjamin Horne and Lynch's own hilarious portrayal of the hard-of-hearing Gordon Cole. Nowhere was the horror of the series more effectively portrayed than in Lynch's most terrifying creation, the demon BOB (played by Frank Silva, who was spotted by Lynch when he was a set decorator working in Laura Palmer's bedroom): a horrendous combination of the psychotic rage of Frank Booth (immortalised by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet) and disturbing otherworldliness of the Mystery Man from Lost Highway. You'll never look in the mirror in the same way again.
In The Pervert's Guide to Cinema philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek gives a fascinating reading of Lynch, that his films continually portray the terrifying tearing of the unknowable, uncontrollable Real through the Symbolic Order of our everyday lives. No more evident is this than in Twin Peaks, a television drama which plays with the form of television itself, at once a Chandler-esque detective story, a glossy, soft focus soap opera and a Lacanian glimpse into the abyss.
