It was thirty years ago today that
Twin Peaks debuted on ABC. Created by television writer Mark Frost and motion picture director David Lynch,
Twin Peaks only a ran a little over a year, but it launched a media franchise that lasts to this day. It also revolutionised American broadcast television.
Twin Peaks centred on the small town of the same name located in the state of Washington. Initially it followed the investigation of Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). The show was unusual in that it was one of the few network television dramas of the time outside of soap operas to have a serialized storyline. It was also set apart from other shows in that it combined several different genres, including detective fiction, supernatural horror, soap opera, and even camp.
As mentioned earlier,
Twin Peaks was created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. Mark Frost was a well-established television writer who had served as story editor on the show
Hill Street Blues. Of course, David Lynch was the director of such motion pictures as
The Elephant Man (1980) and
Blue Velvet (1986). The two men met when they were working together on a screenplay about the life of Marilyn Monroe based on the book
The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. The project never moved forward and Messrs. Frost and Lynch afterwards worked on a comedy screenplay titled
One Saliva Bubble, which also never got off the ground. It was David Lynch's agent, Tony Krantz, who suggested that he do a television show. Mr. Lynch was not enthusiastic about doing a television show, but Mr. Krantz encouraged him to do a television show "...about real life in America—your vision of America the same way you demonstrated it in
Blue Velvet."
Initially Mark Frost and David Lynch decided the show would be set in the plains of North Dakota and would even be titled
North Dakota. It was after they screened the movie
Peyton Place (1957) that they changed the show's location to the Pacific Northwest and the title of the show to
Northwest Passage. The murder of Laura Palmer that provided the impetus for much of
Twin Peaks was inspired by an actual unsolved death. Mark Frost had been told by his grandmother, Betty Calhoun, about Hazel Irene Drew, who had been murdered in Sand Lake, New York in 1908. Miss Drew was a 19 year old blonde who worked as a governess for a local professor and who, from the expensive clothing she wore and her reported relationships with various men, appeared to lead a double life. Her death received national attention and remains unsolved to this day.
Mark Frost and David Lynch pitched what would become
Twin Peaks to ABC and they received the go-ahead to make the series pilot. While Bob Iger, who had become head of ABC Entertainment after the network had picked up the project, liked the pilot, there were those ABC executives who were nervous about it and a few who thought the show would either never make it to the air or would simply air as a seven hour miniseries. As it was, ABC need not have worried.
Twin Peaks debuted on April 8 1990 to good ratings. The pilot movie was watched by 33% of the television audience at the time. While
Twin Peaks would not maintain such incredible Nielsen ratings, it proved to be very popular. In fact, in its first season
Twin Peaks was something of a phenomenon, comparable to the "Davy Crockett" mini-series on
Disneyland in the Fifties or
the TV series
Batman in the Sixties.
Indeed, in 1990 it would have been very difficult to avoid coverage of
Twin Peaks. The show was featured on the covers of such magazines as
Playboy,
Rolling Stone,
Time, and
TV Guide. As might be expected,
Twin Peaks inspired its share of merchandise.
The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer was published in September 1990. It was followed by T
he Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes and
Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town in 1991. The soundtrack to the TV series was also released in September 1990. Just as
Batman in 1966 before it, there was a good deal of unauthorised
Twin Peaks merchandise on the market, particularly T-shirts.
Unfortunately, the success of
Twin Peaks would not last. Ratings for the show declined with the second season. Worse yet, ABC pressured Mark Frost and David Lynch to resolve the murder of Laura Palmer. With the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder, ratings for
Twin Peaks would fall even further. Eventually ratings for
Twin Peaks were so bad that ABC placed the show on indefinite hiatus. It was after a letter writing campaign that ABC decided to air the show's final six episodes, which were burned off during the summer. After being one of the most successful shows of the 1989-1990 season,
Twin Peaks was cancelled in the 1990-1991 season.
As to what led to the cancellation of
Twin Peaks in
its first run, there were multiple reasons. Chief among these was the
fact that ABC moved the show around the network's schedule. Sadly,
changing time slots often hurt a show's ratings. As mentioned above, the resolution of Laura
Palmer's murder also led to a drop in the show's ratings. With the
murder solved, many viewers likely lost interest in the show. Both Mark
Frost and David Lynch believe that the resolution of Laura Palmer's
murder is what killed the show. Complicating matters further, following
the resolution of Laura Palmer's death,
Twin Peaks was often pre-empted by coverage of the Gulf War.
While there can be no doubt that inconsistent time slots, the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder, and consistently being pre-empted by Gulf War coverage took their toll on
Twin Peaks, there may be another reason the show declined in the ratings.
Twin Peaks was very much a fad, not unlike
Batman in the Sixties. Like
Batman,
Twin Peaks received phenomenal ratings when it initially aired. And like
Batman, ratings declined dramatically in its second season. In this respect, both
Batman and
Twin Peaks took the same course as most fads, from the hula hoop to pet rocks. In the book
Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People by Paul Sann, it is noted that often the more intensely a fad is adopted, the shorter its duration will be. Viewers embraced
Twin Peaks almost immediately and there was already a good deal of press coverage and merchandise in its first few months. Having been embraced by viewers so quickly and so intensely, it was perhaps inevitable that viewers would eventually grow tired of the show and stop watching it. Quite simply, the
Twin Peaks fad ended.
While ABC had cancelled the show,
Twin Peaks was hardly gone. A prequel movie,
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, directed by David Lynch, was released in August 1992. In 1993 cable channel Bravo began airing reruns of
Twin Peaks. While no new
Twin Peaks material would emerge following
Fire Walk with Me, the show's fandom remained active and effectively kept the show alive.
It would be the continued popularity of
Twin Peaks that would lead to a third season on the premium cable channel Showtime. The new season debuted on Showtime on May 21 2017 and included eighteen new episodes. The new season brought with it new
Twin Peaks merchandise, including the books
The Secret History of Twin Peaks and
Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier.
For a show that lasted only a little over a year,
Twin Peaks would have a lasting influence. Prior to
Twin Peaks, outside of primetime soap operas, there were only a few shows with extended storylines, among them
Hill Street Blues,
St. Elsewhere,
Crime Story, and
Wiseguy.
Twin Peaks went even further with its serialised storyline than many of the shows before it, to the point that many have counted it as a primetime soap opera. As one of the earliest American television shows with serialised storylines,
Twin Peaks would have a lasting impact on television series from
The X-Files to
Lost to
Mad Men.
Along with
Miami Vice and
Crime Story,
Twin Peaks was also among the first television shows to put an emphasis on cinematography.
Twin Peaks looked very much like a feature film. In this respect,
Twin Peaks can be considered a forerunner of modern television shows, which tend to look much more cinematic than many television shows made in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. In fact, many more recent shows have borrowed liberally from
Twin Peaks in everything from its use of space to tracking shots.
Twin Peaks may have been shot in the traditional television aspect ratio of 4:3 and using analogue technology, but it was by far the most cinematic television show up to that time.
In the years since
Twin Peaks aired its influence has continued to be felt on television shows. The mystery comedy
Pscyh did a tribute to the show with its episode "Dual Spires," which not only contained several references to
Twin Peaks, but included many of its cast as guest stars. While
Riverdale is loosely based on Archie Comics characters, it also owes a good deal to the show. In fact, Mädchen Amick (who played Shelly on
Twin Peaks) is even a member of the cast of
Riverdale.
Twin Peaks has been referenced on shows from
The Simpsons to
Gravity Falls.
Twin Peaks lasted all too briefly. Even with the revival on
Showtime there are only 48 episodes. Still, it had an impact much larger than many shows that ran much longer. Even now,
Twin Peaks continues to have an impact.
