Twin Peaks: overview, style, history and cultural influence

The opening sequence of the first and second season episodes leaves a lasting impression. A collared thrush raises its head, smoke rises from chimneys into the winter sky. Sparking grinding wheels sharpen circular saw blades. Then the lettering Twin Peaks with the population 51 201, behind it the eponymous double mountain peak.

David Lynch and Mark Frost met in 1986 on the initiative of Tony Krantz, who represented both authors with his Creative Artists Agency (CAA). The first joint projects emerged: Screenplays such as Goddess or One Saliva Bubble (1987), however, found no takers. Krantz then suggested to both of them that they try their hand at a television series together. He saw in it the chance to combine Frost's experience of the Hill Street police station with Lynch's visionary lateral thinking. After some initial skepticism, the two sat down and developed a script called The Lemurians for the pilot of a series about a couple of detectives who must battle aliens who have crept among Earth's population. NBC, Frost's employer, rejected the script. As a result, in August 1988, they both set to work on a new script: Northwest Passage. The project was based on the idea of having a murder take place in a soap opera, on which the entire content would then be based. The setting was to be a small town in the north of the USA. To make it easier to find your way around, Frost designed a map of the town and its surroundings. The town was situated between two mountains and the authors renamed their project Twin Peaks. After three months of fruitful discussion, Lynch and Frost wrote the script for the pilot in ten days. The ABC television network agreed to finance the pilot, giving the creators the leeway they needed.

The appropriate filming location was found 50 kilometers east of Seattle in Snoqualmie and North Bend. They offered the lake envisioned by the writers with a waterfall and two snow-capped mountains on the horizon, Mount Si and Little Si. Directed by Lynch, the exterior scenes were shot there in March 1989, and the interior scenes were shot in the San Fernando Valley at City Studios. "In 21 days of shooting, it was in the can [...] The people in charge at ABC liked my work, but at the same time they were scared," Lynch recalls.

In May 1989, there was a screening for international program buyers that became a huge success: Twin Peaks was later sold to 55 countries. ABC commissioned a provisional series of seven episodes.

In September 1989, the pilot was officially premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The reviews were positive to laudatory, yet the network feared they had produced a series for mere film buffs. When the film finally aired on U.S. television at 9 p.m. on April 8, 1990, it became clear that they had scored a hit: 35 million viewers watched the pilot, which corresponded to a 33 percent share.

After this initial high, Mark Frost and David Lynch were hired by the ABC network in May 1990 to produce another season consisting of a second pilot and twelve episodes.

In doing so, the network urged Lynch and Frost, "You must expose Laura Palmer's killer." Both, however, never intended to reveal the killer. After the reveal, the show began to lose viewers. This intervention by the network massively changed the script and the planned course of the series. This was mainly reflected in dramaturgical aspects, so that the core audience interested in the further course of the series was also overwhelmed by the accumulation of mystery aspects and a degree of depth of the material that did not correspond to the previous series course. The material, some of which was intended for the third season, had to be worked into the second season's script - where it existed - by Mark Frost, as production ceased at the end of the second season. Mark Frost worked up his years-long, but most recently inhibited by the cancellation of the series, preoccupation with the Twin Peaks material in his book Seven.

Furthermore, for those countries that only wanted to broadcast the pilot of the first season as a stand-alone feature film, a special ending ("international ending") of about 20 minutes in length was produced, in which the storylines were resolved and the killer was revealed. Parts of these sequences were also used in the series as dream scenes in the 2nd regular season.

During the US broadcast, the individual episodes were introduced by the "Loglady" - because it was still unusual to begin with the action before the title sequences during the first German broadcast, these passages only experienced their premiere with the DVD release.

In 1992 David Lynch released the film Twin Peaks - The Movie, which is called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me in the original. It is a direct prequel to the series, so shows the murder of Laura Palmer and its prehistory. The great success failed to materialize, probably not least due to the fact that much of what had made the series Twin Peaks could not be reproduced here at all or only in abridged form, such as the numerous quirky characters.

The first season was released on DVD in Germany in November 2002. Due to licensing disputes, the release of the second season was delayed by several years. Worldwide protests by the fan community were initially ineffective. The first part of the second season has been available since January 2007, the second part since the beginning of April of the same year. Since October 2007, a "Gold Box" with the entire series and extensive bonus material has also been available.

Episode title

In the original US version, the individual episodes of the first season had no titles. For the German television broadcast, RTL plus came up with titles, which in turn were translated into English when the series was repeated on US cable television and later adopted worldwide. For the second season, David Lynch then decided on his own episode titles.