The Top 10 Twin Peaks moments

That’s some damn fine coffee.

The Killing Times Dispatches: Twin Peaks UK Festival

Twin Peaks: The Return has been one of the television events of the year, no question. Its dizzying, surreal, visceral, infuriating, terrifying, stunning brilliance not only confirmed that David Lynch is still one of the most creative and notable auteurs of both the 20th and 21st centuries but also… there’s still nothing out there like Twin Peaks. During the weekend, the eighth annual Twin Peaks UK Festival took place at the resplendent, Modernist Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre in north London, complete with cabaret, film screenings and Q&As with cast members old and new. It was quite the weekend.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E17&18/18), Tuesday 5th September, Sky Atlantic

A warning: this is going to be the longest review I’ve ever written. Twin Peaks, as regular readers of this site will know, is one of my favourite shows of all time and affects me like no other – then and now. The characters, the setting, the lore, the layers of consciousness explored… it has all added up to something wonderful and beguiling, and something that has stayed with me and will stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s also going to be a long review because of the sheer amount of things that transpired in this two-part finale, some easy to understand, some not so. I could talk about it for a long time, but I’ll try to be as concise as possible, which probably won’t happen. It’s best to strap in and get the coffee on.

Dear David Lynch: Please make a Gordon and Albert Blue Rose spin-off series

Despite it being frustrating and hard going at times, I’m greatly enjoying the third series of Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s cross-dimensional crime drama, which finishes with a two-part finale on Monday 4th September. Throughout the 16 parts so far, we’ve caught up with old favourites, found out how they’ve been created, met new characters and have been plunged into new mysteries. One of the absolute delights, though, has been spending more time with FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (Lynch) and FBI Special Agent, Albert Rosenfeld (the late, great Miguel Ferrer). They’ve crucial roles as the the splintered personality of Agent Dale Cooper has slowly resolved itself, and the more I’ve thought about it the more a spin-off series featuring these two would make sense. So David Lynch, if you’re reading…

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E16/18), Tuesday 29th August, Sky Atlantic

This third series has been a sometimes thrilling, sometimes viscerally terrifying and sometimes infuriating journey. Throughout 15 episodes we’ve waited and waited until Agent Dale Cooper – our beloved FBI man – snapped out of his fugue and take back the identity that had been locked away for so long. No question about it: we’ve all needed saintly patience to get to that point. Ultimately, this is what this third series has been about – the search for identity. It’s been so different in tone and structure to the first two series that I know many friends have been turned off by it, but I’ve seen this as another detective story but not in any traditional, rational or step-by-step procedural sense. No, this series of Twin Peaks has, among other things, been about shattered identities and characters searching for who they used to be. And, after so many false dawns, Dale Cooper – the Dale Cooper we knew and loved – looked for all the world to have found himself again.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E15/18), Monday 21st August, Sky Atlantic

Yes, I’m a bit late with this review of part 15 of series three of Twin Peaks, but I couldn’t leave it be. I’m so engrossed in this new series – even though, on the surface of it, it doesn’t make much sense – that I really do think it’s having as much of an effect on me as the first two series did. Which is saying something.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E13&14/18), Monday 7th and 14th August, Sky Atlantic

Any long-time viewers of Twin Peaks will have been at once beguiled, terrified and intrigued, as well as frustrated, by this extraordinary third series. We’ve been waiting patiently through all the errant, seemingly innocuous and scattered scenes and new characters, hoping that Good Coop is finally revived from his catatonic state and that Bad Coop is returned to The Black Lodge. Finally, finally, by the end of part 14, things looked as though they were on the move.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E12/18), Tuesday 1st August, Sky Atlantic

After this 12th part of series three of Twin Peaks, there are only six episodes left, and there’s still a huge amount to tie up – if David Lynch is indeed in the mood to tie things up at all. Who knows what’s going to happen? Will the Dougie Jones/Good Coop issue be resolved – or at least begin to be resolved – in this episode? Of course not.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E11/18), Tuesday 25th July, Sky Atlantic

In part 11, we were back in Twin Peaks for perhaps longer than we have been in a while. In fact, we seem to be spending more time in the town as each episode goes by, which suggests that all scattered characters and identities will eventually make their way back somehow and there will be some sort of denouement in the town at some point. Although let’s face it, trying to predict anything in this series is such a futile exercise. I’ve said it before and I’ll said it again, every time you think you know what might happen does the rug is well and truly pulled beneath you. And this is one of the reasons why it’s so watchable: you tune in desperate to see Good Coop emerge from his catatonic Dougie Jones state only to see teases of his old self.

Review: Twin Peaks (S3 E10/18), Tuesday 17th July, Sky Atlantic

We’re now into the second half of this series – or 18 hour-long movie as David Lynch would have us approach it – and we’re still none the wiser when it comes to the fate of Dougie Jones/Good Coop. In this 10th episode, there were diversions, some unsettling scenes (in a more subtle way than the kinetic scarefest that was the epic episode eight) and a few, just a few, more hints at where this might go.