That gum we like is going to come back in style, as Showtime has teamed with “Twin Peaks” creators David Lynch and Mark Frost to revive the strangest series in the history of network television, with new installments to arrive in 2016.
Last week, Frost and Lynch freaked out Twitter-dom – or, at least, the part of Twitter that recalls their brilliant, demented, unsustainable ABC drama from 1990-91 – by simultaneously tweeting out the same reference to the single weirdest scene to ever air on a broadcast network drama.
Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style! #damngoodcoffee
– David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) October 3, 2014
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Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style. #damngoodcoffee
– Mark Frost (@mfrost11) October 3, 2014
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Fans of the show – a melodrama set in a small Pacific Northwest town, starting off with the murder of popular teenage girl Laura Palmer and quickly spinning out to involve supernatural killers, giants, owls that aren't what they seem, and a woman who carries a small log everywhere she goes(*) – went wild with speculation on what this could mean. A new movie? A Netflix season? YouTube clips of Cooper dancing in the Black Lodge with the little man and the other doppelgangers?
(*) “We call her the Log Lady,” Sheriff Harry Truman casually explained to visiting FBI Agent Dale Cooper (played by a young Kyle MacLachlan, in the role that best married his innate oddity with more straightforward dramatic chops).
Instead, it's Showtime doing the reviving. Still waiting on official details (though Showtime already posted the teaser trailer that's embedded below), but various published reports suggest it will be a mini-series.
“Twin Peaks” is not only one of the strangest things to ever air on TV, but one of the most influential. So many of the great dramas that followed it in the '90s and this century owe a stylistic debt to the show, from “The X-Files” (which borrowed David Duchovny, the creepy Vancouver environs and a cense of foreboding oddness) to “True Detective” and “Fargo” today. The most amazing thing isn't that it aired on ABC at all – Lynch's career was red-hot at the time, and networks were lining up to work with him – but that it was, however briefly, a hit. For a couple of months in the spring of 1990, America was talking about who killed Laura Palmer, how the fish got in the percolator, why Audrey wore those saddle shoes, etc. In the second season, the show lost creative steam, and the ratings fell off a cliff – years later, Frost admitted to me that he and Lynch had never expected the show to succeed, and therefore made no plans for a second season – but that it was even briefly a hit is remarkable.
More details are apparently coming soon, and I'll update this story when I have them. But in the meantime, what does everybody think of this news? Are you excited to catch up with Agent Cooper, et al, 25 years later? Did the “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” movie give you an appetite for more from this universe, or make you wary of continuing? And do you have any kind of wish list for who and what you'd like to see in the revival?
UPDATE: Some official details from Showtime, including:
* There will be nine episodes, all of them written by Lynch & Frost, all of them directed by Lynch.
* The new episodes will be produced next season to air in 2016, which will be 25 years after the show was canceled.
* Showtime will air the previous two seasons in the lead-up to the new miniseries' debut.
* In the statement, Lynch & Frost said, “The mysterious and special world of 'Twin Peaks' is pulling us back. We”re very excited. May the forest be with you.”