Peak TV with a damn fine cup of coffee!

ARCHIE MCLAREN celebrates David Lynch's ground-breaking, surreal TV series, which combines a slice of cherry pie with sinister extra-dimensional beings

“Diane, 11:30am, February 24th. Entering the town of Twin Peaks. Five miles south of the Canadian border, twelve miles west of the State Line. I’ve never seen so many trees in my life.”

Dale Cooper, the outsider looking in, notices that there is an abundance of trees. These trees must be covering something. A secret? What type? The weird little town of Twin Peaks could exist in our day-to-day lives, but there is something off about it, which the show never truly answers, and it all started with the trees.

On the surface, Twin Peaks should not work as well as it does. Its blend of genres seems jarring and unnatural. Surrealist horror amalgamated with a sense of crime and mystery would undoubtedly be a fascinating experience, but mix all of that with homely, classic American nostalgia and it feels oddly wrong. The body of a dead girl has just been washed up on the shore, yet Dale Cooper needs to tell the audience that the Double R Diner serves the finest coffee he has ever had (of course, black and with constant refills), and the cherry pie is to die for. Yet all the nostalgia which the show serves you - a nostalgia which a significant proportion of the audience would never have even lived - feels just as important to the characters in the show as the most burning question: who killed Laura Palmer?

"It is happening again!"

However, the total absurdity of the tonal shifts does not feel unnecessary or even recognisable to begin with. Everything pieces together to create a wacky and yet deeply dangerous town in America. The all-American archetypal character such as Pete Martell declaring “there was a fish in the percolator”, and the otherwordly character known only as The Giant eerily whispering, “It is happening again”, make sense together. The contrast between the two elements of the show generates the question: are these characters acting so stereotypically, acting like parodies of themselves because they are hiding what is right there beneath the surface? The audience cannot stop watching; they need to see someone drop the façade and reveal what they already knew all along.

David Lynch, who is credited with bringing surrealism into mainstream cinema, used the technique in Twin Peaks expertly to mirror the blended genres and subvert and defy audience expectations. He used these dreamlike narratives techniques essentially against the audience, using them not to answer any of their questions, but to leave them with more and craft their own judgements. The audience would have to watch for longer because what if something was revealed which changed the whole trajectory of the lore hidden within this quaint little town?

Who are the red room characters?

The absence of any direct explanation of the fantastical elements in Twin Peaks was revolutionary. Why do some of the entities in the mysterious Red Room - initially only presented inside one of Agent Cooper's dreams - speak backwards, and why do some not? Who are these mystical characters who intrude from another dimension into the Twin Peaks community? Spirits? Cosmic beings? Or simply a figment of the imagination? The lore being interpretive makes the fanbase for Twin Peaks ever stronger.

Another reason why Twin Peaks feels the way it does, is the incredible fan service, unique and ultimately renovating, turning Laura Palmer, a tragic character who haunts the narrative, into a cultural phenomenon. Even if you have not watched Twin Peaks, I guarantee that you have come across Laura Palmer at least once or twice.

The infamous image of her surrounded by a blue background, smiling, whilst the magical Twin Peaks score plays in the background is one of the most recognisable moments in TV history.

The owls are not what they seem.

Written by ARCHIE MCLAREN (BA English Literature student, University of Chester, UK)