Twin Peaks

Over Christmas I set myself to watch the first season of Twin Peaks, a 7 x 45 minute American TV series directed and created by David Lynch.

Lynch seems to be one of these mythical directors that every film student loves. Personally I haven't seen that much of his work and this was the first of them I enjoyed. The Elephant Man was just so-so and Dune was so bad it was good: which isn't the standard anyone should be aspiring to!

But with Twin Peaks, Lynch seems to have created something rather special. When the beautiful student Laura Palmer is found dead, wrapped in plastic, in the sleepy town of Twin Peaks in the state of Washington, a chain of event is set in motion which carries us through the whole first series and apparently right into the second.

The town is host to a vast number of bizzare and quirky characters, ranging from eyepath-wearing Nadine, desperate to patent her inventions; to the sultry student Audrey Horne, the classic femme fatale; via the Log Lady, who never goes anywhere without carrying her baby log.

The character who is our link: the one who, like us, is a stranger getting to know these people, is one of the most engaging characters I've seen on screen. An FBI agent sent in to take over the investigation, we automatically assume he will be the grim, hyper-efficient bully we are familiar with from so many other shows, who will rub everyone up the wrong way. In contrary, he immediately makes good friends with the Sherrif and there is barely the smallest wrankle of tension between them all the way through. Our expectations are further shattered when Agent Cooper turns out to be one of the most upbeat, cheerful and essentially happy characters in the show. We are so used to hard-bitten, grim, gruff detectives, suffering from depression, unable to hold down a relationship, respected but unloved, that to see a "happy detective" is so unusual as to draw us in totally.

The murder of Laura Palmer, so crucial at the beginning, proves to only be one story among several. With several different individuals in the community taking it upon themselves to investigate privately, and with everyone in the town keeping at least one secret and double crossing someone somewhere along the lines, this becomes hugely complex very quickly and for that, it is gripping.

The quirky view of reality, with nothing quite being as it seems, reminds me almost of Alice in Wonderland. "We're all a little bit mad here" says the Mad Hatter, and certainly that is true of Twin Peaks. Apparently in the second season, which the library does not stock, things get even wierder, with demon possession, people rising from the dead, doppelgangers and soul-suckers. But in season one, the supernatural element is only hinted at. One character receives visions, and Agent Cooper claims some dubious skills he picked up from Tibet.

Hugely entertaining, both funny, intriguing, tragic, gripping and insightful, I consdier Twin Peaks to be probably the best TV show I have seen. The message of the series is easily summed up in one line, a paraphrase of something one of the characters says. "The secrets we keep destroy all our hopes of happiness"