James Keown

Today, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to tv shows, with ground-breaking series such as Breaking Bad, Peaky Blinders, Stranger things, Mad Men and Game of Thrones, to name a few. We are currently living in the golden age of television, with a plenty of shows to choose, from the witty sitcoms to nail-biting thrillers carrying us through our lives.

Direct your attention to one of the major players in giving us this golden age of television. A strange little drama created by film maker David Lynch, Twin Peaks.

For a little context, around the time Twin Peaks was set to come out, television was nowhere near the juggernaut it was today. There was no widespread, intellectually challenging entertainment. Television was drowning in an abundance of simple and unchallenging media, mostly a dime a dozen sit coms with straightforward plots wrapped up in 30 minutes.

There was a widespread acceptance that television was considered inferior to cinema, even going as far as to be dubbed the “idiot box” by people such as Groucho Marx, John Irving, and Roald Dahl.

However, in 1990, things were brewing in the studios of ABC when director David Lynch and writer Mark Frost were brought onboard to write and create a television show for them. Lynch’s career had been well known for his strange and bizarre works that confronted the audience.

In shows such as Eraser Head, Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, he challenged his audience to think and feel the material.

Lynch enjoyed challenging the notions of idealism and nostalgia for humble small-town Americana, revealing a darker secret beneath it that would make the audience curious. He was unwilling to provide concrete, solid answers to his stories, instead preferring to give the audience the freedom to come to their own conclusions.

This creativity and ground-breaking intellect were thrown into a melting pot. The resulting combination was Twin Peaks.

So, what is Twin peaks? On the surface, the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington is a logging community in the mountains, bright and picturesque. The setting is shattered by the murder of the high school prom queen, Laura Palmer. The catastrophe plunges the small town into a revealing, high-stakes investigation which uncovers an inner darkness lurking just outside of the viewer’s vision.

Mystery escalates, and with each new piece of the puzzle, we as the audience begin to realise a much larger picture.

The show handles some rather dark subject matter, and is grounded in realism. Abuse, murder, and adultery feature, without detracting from the wholesome residents of Twin Peaks.

This is personified rather well in the protagonist, Special Agent Dale B Cooper, the FBI’s finest. Cooper is explicitly brought to Twin Peaks with the purpose of investigating Laura Palmer’s death. Irrespective of this, Cooper maintains his wonder and enjoyment of Twin Peaks and its strange quaintness, often excited by the trees surrounding the town, its natural beauty or its coffee and cherry pie served at the local diner.

The show does take a distinctly supernatural twist to the investigation, laying into some fantastical elements and lurking evil that threatens to envelope Twin Peaks. UFO sightings, rumours of a darkness in the forest and the spotting of giants keep us on edge.

For the integrity of the story, I won’t go into spoiler territory.

Long form TV shows that would follow such as The Sopranos, The X-files, True Detective and even Gravity Falls owe their existence to Twin Peaks.

Although a home for the weird and uncanny, Twin Peaks paved the way for the golden age of television to follow.

So, nestle in with a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie from the local diner; there are three seasons and a film of content. Soon you will be deep in the spider web of darkness and scheming, as the creator of the show David Lynch said himself: “In a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent.”

James Keown is a second year Journalism student at Ulster University

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