It’s a cold, rainy morning in Twin Peaks, Washington. Fog is lifting off the lake; the morning coffee is still warming up at the Double R Diner; and Pete Martell (Jack Nance) is preparing to go fishing. Leaving his quaint log cabin, Pete spots something out of place on the riverbank – it’s a body. “She’s dead - wrapped in plastic,” he tells Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) in a shaky voice over the telephone. It’s 1990 and the world is about to ponder the question, ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ It’s also a landmark moment in television. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks would go on to become a cult classic, adored by critics and loved by fans across the world. Some of those fans made their own television shows. Indeed, without Twin Peaks, the television landscape we know today would look remarkably different.
In the 21 years since it first aired in the US, Twin Peaks’ lasting influence has seen doors opened for television shows which might never have been made had it not been such a success. It awoke television executives to the reality that there was an audience out there prepared to venture into the strange unknown, and had it not aired, similarly trippy series like HBO’s Carnivale would never have seen the light of day. Kyle MacLachlan, who played the eccentric FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, told the Guardian last year that the show, “gave a real jolt to television. Creative people felt the freedom to explore different themes. It showed people who make the decisions about what goes on air and what doesn't that the audience were open to trying something less traditional.”
From unusual plotlines to disjointed timelines, Twin Peaks gave subsequent screenwriters and directors the confidence they needed to experiment more with their shows. And with this newfound freedom came some of the quirkiest characters ever to grace our screens. Anyone who has ever watched J.J. Abram’s Fringe will know that the heart of that show belongs to Walter Bishop. Played brilliantly by the versatile John Noble, who injects Walter with pathos and eccentricity in equal measures, it’s hard to imagine that the character would have ever existed if it hadn’t been for the creation of Dale Cooper. The eccentricities that have helped Walter win our hearts are not dissimilar to similar ones first displayed by Cooper.
Channelling Tibetan magic to solve crime; eating nothing but sugary pastries; tasting coffee with the critical mind of a caffeine connoisseur - Lynch’s FBI agent introduced audiences to a new kind of television character: one with an odd kind of charisma; an unusualness which made him instantly likeable.
In retrospect, Walter’s love for red lace liquorice, strawberry milkshakes, deadly scientific experiments and mind altering drugs (which he employs in deciphering the Fringe team’s cases) starts to sound somewhat unoriginal. Not that Walter is any less loveable than Dale; it’s just that the prior mentioned could not exist without the latter.
Chris Carter, creator of The X Files, leaps to mind as just one of many writers who mustered the courage to pursue their vision by ignoring interference from network executives (who, on a side note, must have been biting their nails anxiously at the thought of a television series following the adventures of a pair of alien-chasing FBI agents). But contrary to the belief that the show would be a flop, The X Files was a huge success, more so than Twin Peaks in terms of longevity and commercial bankability. However the similarities between it and Twin Peaks are there. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is a dreamer, an FBI agent who believes in the existence of higher beings and the paranormal. Like Fringe’s Walter Bishop, Mulder is another Dale Cooper doppelganger. Suspiciously, Duchovny even makes a guest appearance in the second series of Twin Peaks as a transvestite FBI agent. Carter has never made his love for Twin Peaks a secret, citing it as an inspiration for The X Files several times over the years, but ‘inspiration’ does not truly convey how much of a stepping stone Twin Peaks was to the series.
Unfortunately, not every series can be as successful as The X Files and tragically there will always be causalities in the battle for creative freedom. When HBO commissioned the dustbowl-era drama Carnivale in 2003, critics quickly drew comparisons to Twin Peaks. Likening Carnivale to its thematically similar cousin, Amanda Murray, writing for the BBC, noted that “like that show, this is weird compelling storytelling. With so little revealed, it’s impossible to pass judgement on the show – it’s hard to tell if this is just good, or going to be great.” Carnivale had the potential to be one of the best television shows ever created, but it wasn’t to be. It was cancelled after two seasons, a fate it shared with the series it was so often likened to.
Yes, as unimaginable as it might seem, Twin Peaks was only ever given two seasons. But its short stay on television was far from unnoticed. The finale episode of season one was watched by approximately 11.5 million American viewers, making it, at the time, one of the most viewed television shows ever to be broadcast. As Guardian writer Andrew Anthony explains: ““That's a damn fine cup of coffee,” Agent Cooper liked to say. One way or another, American TV woke up and smelt it.” But the rating didn’t last long.
Fearing that the plot was becoming too convoluted, and with audience figures plummeting, a decision was made by ABC executives to prematurely reveal Laura Palmer’s killer. This was meant to swell audience numbers again, but the plan backfired: the decision killed the show. David Lynch, furious that his vision had been ruined, left production: “the question of what happened to Laura Palmer was the goose that laid the golden egg. Then ABC asked us to snip the goose's head off, and it killed the goose. And there went everything. It was never meant to be; there was so much more to the mystery,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2007.
The rest of the cast and crew soldiered on, but things were never the same after Lynch’s left. The series was dropped.
David Lynch and his crew succeeded in creating a show that was complex, funny and scary, and even today it stands the test of time. Most new series will never attain the level of critical acclaim and fan admiration that Twin Peaks received, although there are some recent shows which have come close. J.J. Abrams’ Lost, a drama about a group of plane crash survivors forced to live on a strange island, is as mysterious and bizarre as anything that transpired on Twin Peaks, but Lost is just a pretender to the throne. It will never hold the kind of influence Twin Peaks does.
It lived fast and died young, but Twin Peaks will always be remembered by those with a taste for quality drama as a monumental step in the creation of more interesting television. And for that we can be forever grateful.
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