Who killed Laura Palmer? The was the question my 17 year old self was obsessed with when David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks first aired on TV. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen. Up until that point, Dallas (who shot J.R.?) was probably the pinnacle of episodic America telly, but when Bobby Ewing ‘woke up’ in the shower, negating vast quantities of plotline as a big old dream, it lost all credibility. At least in my eyes.
Twin Peaks was entirely different. It was, after all, David Lynch - one of the most avant garde, visionary, and frankly weird directors of modern times. Twin Peaks was everything, and nothing. It was a hot mess of misdirection, supernatural horror, murder mystery and comedy gems. No one had ever seen anything like it before and the whole planet was fixated.
So 26 years on, and I’m slightly over half way through Twin Peaks: The Return - the new 18 episode-long season 3 that nearly every Peaker never thought possible. It’s incredible - whether you like Twin Peaks or not - to imagine that this is happening again. The show from 1990 forged a new direction for all modern TV shows that followed; Lost, Northern Exposure, even The Sopranos and The Wire. TV changed forever with Twin Peaks, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.