Twin Peaks review: A haunting return to Lynch-land

Can the new series of the cult classic maintain its dark Lynchean drama and live up to expectations? Richard Godwin finds it just as intriguing as ever
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Richard Godwin22 May 2017

Diane, I’m watching Twin Peaks: The Return and, even amid a cacophony of expectations, it has lost none of its capacity to unsettle.

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s transcendental murder mystery ran for 30 episodes in 1990-91, causing TV audiences nightmares on both sides of the Atlantic. Of the choice exhibits on display last night, I think my favourite would have to be a pulsating organ resembling a testicle with a mouth perched on the top of a tree branch saying: “253. Time and time again. Bob. Bob. Bob. Go now! Go now!”

The first two hours of the 18-hour revival also provided us with a jet-black man levitating in a prison cell; a sinister Ace of Spades; and a cautionary image of what might happen if you have sex at work.

The locale of Twin Peaks — the Pacific Northwest mill town devastated by the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer — was glimpsed only in a few scenes. Instead, Lynch offered a dark and multi-stranded narrative, a series of cryptic clues (“430”; “Richard and Linda”; the secretary’s car), a groaning soundtrack and the sure touch of one of Hollywood’s truest auteurs.

Return of a classic: the new series of Twin Peaks sees Kyle MacLachlan revisit his role as Agent Cooper
Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME

Much of the action takes place at the Red Room, the velvet-curtained purgatory where the soul of FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was trapped at the end of the second season, his body possessed by the demon spirit Bob. We learn that the “evil” Cooper is due back to the Black Lodge soon.

Then we have a strand in a New York tower block, where a college student (Ben Rosenfield) is being paid by a “mysterious billionaire” to monitor a creepy glass box. There’s a cutaway to Las Vegas, too, where a Mr Todd (Patrick Fischler) informs his young associate: “You better hope you never get involved with someone like him.”

But the most Lynchean happenings take place in Buckhorn, South Dakota, where the police are investigating the murder of a librarian, beheaded in bed. The evidence fingers the local high-school principal (Matthew Lillard). Meanwhile, the evil Cooper is at large nearby, with a striking new look: long hair, black leather jacket, a snake-print shirt.

Twin Peaks - what the cast looks like now

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One question hanging over the revival was: would Twin Peaks still seem special now that so many shows have been born in its image? There are echoes of The Bridge and Stranger Things. But these are not so much borrowings as I’ll-have-that-backs, and Lynch is too distinctive a director ever to seem anything other than himself.

More of its time is the emphasis on sexualised violence. In the original, Lynch didn’t linger over the brutality of Palmer’s murder but let you feel its effect through the emotions of her friends and family. Lynch now has more control. Perhaps inevitably, what’s sacrificed is the magic of TV as populist medium, where a random viewer might tune in hoping for a soap opera, only to be taken somewhere else entirely.

Still, the last scene at the Bang Bang bar does locate that note of rhapsodic emotion. The Chromatics sing Shadow, James (James Marshall) makes eyes at Shelly (Mädchen Amick), and you’re only too happy to be haunted again.

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