From the editor: Best TV show ever

Oh boy! Twin Peaks is a helluva show. I wrote about the new series a few weeks ago but have to return to it. What David Lynch and Mark Frost have achieved with this truly unique combination of humour, warmth, terror, beauty, horror, magic, darkness, light, and the inimitable Dale Cooper beggars belief.

One of the things I love about Twin Peaks now is how much richer the world is thanks to the 18 part new season. Whilst we previously had the first two seasons and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, these felt like they were cut down and abandoned, with heartbreakingly unresolved plotlines.

Don’t expect clear resolutions of course, but we now have a fuller saga to share with friends and family. I’m so envious of those who haven’t leapt in yet. You get the short, tight, gripping first season that for many people defines Twin Peaks. The second season famously meanders (with 21 episodes to the first season’s eight) with some less focused material, but still contains some brilliant new characters (the pine weasel is my favourite) and some fantastic episodes such as the Lynch-directed finale ‘The Path To The Black Lodge’.

Fire Walk With Me was under-appreciated and under-seen upon its release after the series finished, but the bleaker, more serious film is expertly crafted (with some of composer Angelo Badalamenti’s best work), and is also an important part of the complete puzzle. It is essential viewing before the third season, which feels tonally closer to Lynch’s later films, as well as a response to the sex and violence viewers are accustomed to from boxset television. So don’t expect such a rose-hued experience as the original series, but you can look forward to a beguiling conclusion to the best televisual saga of all time.

Joe Fuller
editorial@thelatest.co.uk