It’s easy to forget what an anomaly Twin Peaks was when it first arrived in 1990. It’s like forgetting how rebellious the Simpsons initially felt, or what the Beatles must have sounded like to a teenager in the 60s. Twin Peaks was such a huge leap forward for television – twisting and pulling the format into shapes nobody had previously thought possible – that the rest of the industry whooshed to catch up with it.

And so watching the first episode of Twin Peaks: The Return in today’s landscape is actually a little unsettling, because at first all you can see are its imitators. The glass box, the one that has to be perpetually monitored to keep the bad spirits of the Black Lodge out, feels like something from Lost. The woozy visuals and languid pace seem straight out of True Detective. The quirky, tangential small-town conversations? Fargo. The constant feeling that you don’t know exactly what’s going on? Legion.



Twin Peaks review – David Lynch reboot will baffle and irk even hardcore fans Read more

All these shows – and so many more – owe a tremendous debt to David Lynch, but their prevalence threatened to dim the sparkle of Twin Peaks’ originality. So how do you make Twin Peaks when the whole world is already making Twin Peaks? The answer, if you’re Lynch, seems to be to go full-tilt.

Even by previous standards, last night’s opener was ambitious. Dale Cooper is now a serial killer possessed by the spirit of BOB. The man he replaced – the open-hearted coffee-and-pie Dale Cooper – is now trapped in a multidimensional netherworld. Laura Palmer, who died, is now alive again – or at least she seemed to be until she dissolved in a bloodthirsty screaming fit. Michael J Anderson, the dwarf from the original series who talked himself out of the revival by accusing Lynch of many terrible things, has been replaced by an electric tree with a big fleshy apple for a head. The scary moments are scarier, the funny moments are funnier and the deliberately boring moments – of which there have always been plenty – are now punishingly tedious.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The scary moments are scarier, the funny moments are funnier … and Dale Cooper is now a serial killer possessed by the spirit of BOB. Photograph: Suzanne Tenner/Showtime

The bigger problem the series now faces is the internet. The world moved at a slower pace back when the original was broadcast, and Twin Peaks had to be unpacked one episode at a time, in person, among likeminded friends. Now, though, any programme of note will inevitably be commented on by hundreds of ravenous outlets just after it ends, each of them harvesting every last frame for answers and meaning. This is great if the show in question follows a recognisable pattern, but less so if it’s deliberately oblique.

Twin Peaks thrives on enigma and confusion, and trying to parse it for a linear narrative is almost impossible. Right now the focus of the series seems to be returning Evil Dale Cooper to the Black Lodge, but you can only make that conclusion if you hack away at all the wild digressions and dead ends that surround that particular thread. Laura Palmer is alive and dead at the same time. Dead bodies are turning up attached to different heads. Long scenes are made up of nothing but wordless shovel deliveries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Even by previous standards, the new episodes are ambitious … Laura Palmer, who died, is now alive again. Photograph: Suzanne Tenner/Showtime

By design, Twin Peaks is supposed to frustrate and beguile you like nothing else. Even Legion had a source material to reference, for crying out loud. But, even at the end of these 18 new episodes, it’s unlikely that we’ll be any the wiser about anything. To watch Twin Peaks is to understand that you’re going wherever Lynch wants to take you, regardless of convention. Perhaps we should all just detach ourselves and enjoy the ride.

