Twin Peaks

▪ American television show

      American television drama that was broadcast on the American Broadcasting Co (American Broadcasting Company). (ABC) network for two seasons (1990–91) and garnered critical acclaim and a cult following with its unconventional narrative, surreal tone, and eerie characters.

      Twin Peaks was created by Mark Frost and David Lynch (director of the motion picture Blue Velvet [1986]), the latter already well known for making strange films with macabre motifs. The show began with the discovery of the body of a murdered teenage prom queen, Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee), in the small town of Twin Peaks, Wash., near the Canadian border and revolved around the ensuing murder investigation led by Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), an idiosyncratic FBI special agent sent to help solve the case. The investigation and the clues he received in his bizarre dreams gradually led Cooper to the network of secrets and mysteries surrounding the town and its eccentric inhabitants. Starting out as a murder mystery, the show evolved into an examination of the sinister double lives of the innocent-looking townsfolk and the dark, paranormal mysteries of this seemingly quaint town.

      Publicized and greeted as an extraordinary piece of television “art” that would redefine the boundaries of small-screen drama, the show reaped critical acclaim and attracted considerable public attention even before airing. Its two-hour pilot was a massive success in the ratings, and the show managed to pique the curiosity of its audience with the mystery surrounding Laura's murder and hook viewers with its unique Lynchian sensibility, combining a strange, dreamy mise-en-scène with an artistic tone and moments of black humour.

      Viewer interest began to fade, however, as plot threads became more and more obscure and the show failed to move toward a traditional resolution of its myriad mysteries, foremost among them the identity of Laura's killer. While an answer to that central enigma was provided early in the second season, the introduction of new convoluted story lines and the ever-increasing strangeness of the show led to a plunge in ratings, critical backlash, and cancellation (despite protests from hard-core fans) after two seasons. In 1992 Lynch made Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a film providing both a prologue (by depicting Laura's life over the week leading up to her murder) and an epilogue to the series, which was not received favourably by critics or audiences.

      Twin Peaks was nominated for more than a dozen Emmy Awards and won two. Still a cult favourite, it was ranked among the Top 25 Cult Shows and Top 50 Television Programs of All Time by TV Guide and was named one of the 100 best shows in television history by Time magazine. The eerie atmosphere that permeated and defined the show has influenced other television series, such as The X-Files (1993–2002).

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