The show’s creators, Mark Frost and David Lynch worked on several projects in the late eighties that sadly never got made, including a bio-pic of Marilyn Monroe based on the autobiography ‘The Goddess’, and a comedy they co-wrote themselves called ‘One Saliva Bubble’, which is far too bizarre to go in to detail here (though we promise a feature on it soon). A couple of other projects were planned too, until they became obsessed in 1988 with an idea about a surreal soap opera entitled Northwest Passage. 18 odd months later, the show, now re-titled ‘Twin Peaks’ hit American screens with a mixture of enormous hype and generous previews. Broadcast on the ABC network, the show became an immediate hit – partially due to Lynch’s involvement in the show, and partly due to it’s extremely attractive if largely unknown cast. A whole nation was, at first at least, gripped by a murder mystery that not only posed the ‘whodunnit’ question, but also tried to explain ‘whatdunnit’ and ‘whydunnit’ too.
Twin Peaks has since gone down in to (media) history as one of the most intelligent, stylish and twisted soap opera’s ever to have been made. And it’s mainly due to the arresting imagery found throughout the series, from Laura Palmer’s body wrapped in plastic to Cooper’s final showdown in the black lodge, the sharp and original dialogue, the amazing emotive and evocative soundtrack, and the collection of believable even if horrific characters that has prevented Twin Peaks from looking outdated when viewed today.
Still, whilst the surreal murder mystery’s may hold an audience’s attention for a while, what a show really need’s is a truly original and interesting character’s, and, of course, decent actors, and Twin Peaks had them in spades. From Kyle Machlachlan’s elegant, heroic Dale Cooper, Frank Silva’s animalistic Bob, Ray Wise’s constantly un-nerving Leland Palmer to Lynch’s own amusing performance as FBI Boss Gordon Cole, the whole show wasn’t let down by a single bad performance.
Unfortunately, despite the huge initial success of the show, the second season hurt viewing figures – it opened with a highly criticised episode in which little was explained about the last season’s cliffhanger, and viewers started switching off their tv sets throughout the world at this point. David Lynch has gone on record stating that he never wanted the murder mystery to end, but with his input sadly lacking in most of the second series, the killer was revealed, and once Laura’s murder was solved, the programme began to suffer. Indeed, the writer’s on the show themselves weren’t quite sure what to do.
Harley Peyton, in an interview in Peaks fanzine Wrapped In Plastic, claimed that an alleged romance between Audrey and Cooper was to be the main plot line: “We had planned it, but unfortunately Kyle refused to do it. So we ended up with no second season! All we had were back stories. Every story that you saw for those five episodes was meant to be secondary and really unimportant. Suddenly that was all we had. And we had nothing to replace it.” (WAP 17, John Thorne and Craig Miller, 1995, p.6). That the show was so watchable even this admittedly dodgy period goes to show the strength and quality of the writing and directing team. Yet whilst a new villain was clearly needed to help falling figures, Bob’s successor, Windom Earle, never really caught the audience’s interest and the programme began struggling, if not artistically, which if anything improved, than at least in the popularity stakes. It was taken off air in the US with a few episodes left to air, though fortunately through fan pressure, the finale was finally shown.
And it’s the last episode, directed by Lynch and largely re-written by him, which is one of the reasons why Twin Peaks will always be remembered. Dark, confusing, and television that defiantly refuses to give easy answers. Mainly set in the Black Lodge, it detailed Cooper’s battle to win back new girlfriend Annie (a young Heather Graham) with surreal dialogue and imagery, but it was the tone and unsettling direction that led to a real feeling of fear. When Cooper fails to escape the lodge, his evil doppleganger takes his place in the real world, and a final image of a laughing Cooper/Bob screaming ‘How’s Annie?’ in to a broken mirror shocked fans who, as in most tv world’s, expected a happy ending. Of course many hoped it would return, but when it did, it didn't provide the closure the fans had hoped for.
Pretty much all of the tabloid reviews strongly criticised the film, which isn't surprising considering the audience they were writing for, but broadsheets like The Independent and The Guardian slated the film too, criticising the very weak performances, and perhaps a little bizarrely considering how little notice was usually taken of him, one critic bemoaned the loss of Mark Frost. Time Out's Geoff Andrew’s followed suit claiming the film to be a "cash in on the tv success," but also that "Lee, in particular, proves she can't carry a movie." Other criticism of the film also commented "they evidently never felt that the tortuous narrative need make sense to audiences," and perhaps most damningly "The whole thing looks like off-cut's from the series that were eliminated because they were either too nasty or too inept." Not good, huh. So you can imagine that no one thought the film would ever make classic status.
But recently the film has been reappraised. First rumblings came from "TV and Satellite Week," known for it's surprisingly intelligent reviews, which described the film as: "Very unsettling and filled with genuinely morbid imagery." Time Out also praised it on it's terrestrial television premier, and since then many publications have given it favourable reviews and now the film is seen as at least as equally as interesting as the rest of the series. Which is what the film deserves, as it compliments the series well, and certainly Ray Wise's performance is nothing but outstanding. The shooting script for the film is well worth checking out too, as it contains aproximately an hours worth of extra material, some of which is of a far more lighter tone than the rest of the film.
Alex Finch.
The following sites are well worth checking out if you want to know more about the series:
The Official Twin Peaks Site
The Great Northern
Twin Peaks Complete Episode Guide
The Twin Peaks Humour Archive
Now It's Dark
Twin Peaks Online
Approaches To Twin Peaks
Lynchnet: The David Lynch Resource
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